Customer satisfaction and revenue generation are every parking manager’s priorities. Experience and common sense can solve many of the issues that arise in parking operation management, but are your problems actually being solved effectively and permanently—in a way that improves customer satisfaction and revenue streams?
Let’s take a look at three common parking lot management problems and the solutions you can use to resolve these issues completely and satisfactorily.
1. Replacing Monthly Tenants
The majority of revenue in a parking operation comes directly from the tenants in the building in which the garage resides. But what happens if a large tenant moves out of the building and takes dozens to hundreds of parkers and a large chunk of revenue with them? In order to lease the space again, the quickest solutions will be to:
- Advertise your space
- Ensure your rates are competitive and make necessary adjustments to attract new customers to fill the vacancy
If your garage is located in an area where demand is high, simply placing a sign on the curb advertising monthly parking may attract enough new parkers to backfill your recent vacancy. If demand is not high, you may have to adjust your monthly rates, implement an early bird program, and backfill your empty spaces with transient parkers.
To successfully attract new tenants, you’ll need to know your area and how to market your services. You may also want to consider marketing to organizations that you may have overlooked while you were at capacity, such as restaurants or hotels, to get spaces filled during off hours while you search for a permanent solution. In the end, you simply want to fill those empty spaces to earn that missing revenue.
2. Improving Uncompetitive Rates
In order to keep your rates competitive, you’ll want to monitor your facility’s activity and the rates of other operations in your area to see if your prices and activities are where they need to be. If you’re seeing way too much activity and a full garage every day, your rates are probably too low. But if you see a vast number of empty spaces every day, your rates may be too high.
Finding that sweet spot for your rates can be a process of trial and error in the beginning, but the effort is well worth it in the end—because once you’re competitively priced, you’ll find it easier to attract new business and maintain a high level of revenues.
3. Solving Automation Pains
Parking automation solutions were developed to make the parking experience much easier—in essence, effortless. In this case, automation streamlines the parking experience by eliminating the need for customers to interact with attendants who may cause errors. However, for those who aren’t familiar with automated parking solutions, the technology involved can be confusing. And in that case, you may want to consult an expert if you choose to implement an automated parking system.
Whether you use human attendants or automation, any parking issues that you have are fundamentally going to boil down to a customer service problem. As such, they require that you show empathy by listening closely to what your customers are telling you so you can quickly and efficiently resolve their issues. Maybe your garage needs clearer signs to guide parkers? Maybe your automatic entry and exit system have been lagging? Whatever the problem is, there’s always a solution—you just need to find the right one.
And once the solution has been implemented, you’ll want to pay attention to what your customers are saying about their parking experience to ensure that their issues were effectively resolved, even if it means providing extra on-site attendants to explain the changes if visitors have lots of questions.
Long-Term Benefits of Solving Parking Problems
Especially if several problems manifest at once at your parking facility, it can be frustrating to continually solve one issue after another with no apparent short-term reward. However, the long-term benefits are clear: solving problems makes your owners and clients happy. For example, owners are happiest when you are generating the most income, and customers are happiest when they can get in and out of your garage without issues. And if they are happy, they will continue to use your space, thus generating recurring revenue.
The Ideal Solution: Outsourcing Parking Management
It’s always more difficult to solve parking issues on your own—especially if they are time or money sensitive. Fortunately, there is a solution that eases this entire parking process: outsourcing the parking management process to industry experts with over 30 years of experience and a passion for offering innovative solutions to a garage’s toughest problems. This way, you can focus on more pressing issues that are non-parking related and leave the tedious day-to-day operations of your parking garage to someone that has the passion to do it for you.
Contact us today for more information about common parking lot problems and solutions.