Planning for Success with Customer Experience in Your Parking Facility

 

By Nicholas King

As parking professionals, we often find ourselves looking for the best ways to impact the client’s experience while utilizing our products and services in parking facilities.  Some parking owners and operators feel that more signage is more communication but we all know that while signage is a source for information, most parkers do not read the posted signs in times of ingress and egress of a facility.

In my experience, providing the best possible parking experience leads to repeat customers that in turn leads to increased revenue over time.  Here are some suggestions that can help impact the client experience while visiting your parking facility or lot and hopefully give that “wow” factor to the patrons that choose to use your facility:

  • Spending time in the lane and greeting parkers as they enter or exit the facility: This sounds simple enough, but really engaging the customers as they enter or exit the facility is proven to give that sense of security and true “feel good” experience. Provide contact information whether it’s a business card or sharing a one page flier while connecting in the lane to give the customers the additional outlet for contacting or commenting about their experience while in the facility.
  • Distributing regular communication to your monthly and transient parkers: Be sure to send out regular communications to the parkers that use the facilities/lots the most! Though it is quite possible these won’t get read, try to make them eye-catching and bright/cheerful in some way to gain the audience.  Provide updates about the company they do business with daily to really share fun information about the business.  Share best practices for parking in a structure or lot and ALWAYS share information on how to reach someone for any type of need.  Maybe include periodically a survey to customers as well for them to provide valuable feedback on how to improve the customer experience.
  • Stay up-to-date on trends, events, and publications: Ensure you and your team are staying up to date on trends in your industry, city/state, and upcoming events that could impact your business. Ensuring your team is knowledgeable about current events in and around your facility will help drive information to the end users.  Being aware of industry specific information as it relates to your business can help guide business decisions in many ways from competitive rates all the way to vehicle larceny.  Conduct regular huddles with your team to keep them “in the know” and to help feed the knowledge base for accurate information transfer to your clients.

The hope is always to provide exceptional service to your clients through your team and to impact business by setting your facility, company, and team up for success.  Parkers of course, most of the time just want to park their car and move on with their day but by planning a strategy with your team members to give the utmost best possible service, you can seriously set your business apart from the typical parking operations and increase new and repeat customers for transient, event, and monthly parkers.

Nicholas King  is Senior Customer Experience Manager for FLASH, and a member of the IPMI Planning, Design, & Construction Committee. He can be reached at nicholas.king@flashparking.com.