Should Parking Give More Ways to Pay to Park?
Here is the first question that needs to be answered: Who is your audience? Are they visitors, commuters, students, downtown business owners and shoppers, or large companies.
The more ways you provide for a parker to pay for your services the better customer service experience they will have? Is the service I want to offer going to lead to confusion for my audience? If you add a feature or application to your current parking services will it be adopted and used frequently by your audience?
Make sure that whatever service(s) you choose to adopt it will be received well by the audience you are providing these services for. This would include pay on foot stations, parking meters, pay by phone application, and garage parking just to name a few.
You need to know is your department’s financial goals. Is it to break even or to make money? Make sure you understand your role, responsibility, and authority level when managing large revenues or changing the way you receive more revenue for your department. Do your parking research. If you are signing a contract or buying equipment, you will need have involvement from purchasing and legal at the very beginning.
There are a lot of items that get left out or over looked in a contract if you are not sure what to look for. Research, research, research here are few guiding tools
Ask as many questions with other parking professionals
Demo the product for your others within your organization that will be effected if you add the service
Visit a another parking operation that uses the product you are interested in
Have the sales representative walk you through the customer’s experience, asked about maintenance, asked about any fees that are expected outside the contract.
If you don’t ask the questions the right way (because you are not educated on the services enough) you won’t get the right answers you were seeking to make a good financial decision. To be a good steward of the tax payer’s dollars, university dollars, airport dollars, you need to do your research! Be prepared, be honest about what you don’t know and seek to understand all facts to make sure that you are improving the customer’s experience and meeting your financial goals!
Michelle L. Wahl, CAPP, is the Parking Services Director for the City of Bloomington, IN. Michelle can be reached at michelle.wahl@bloomington.in.gov.
