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The Ultimate Guide To Parking Lot Management
The Ultimate Guide To Parking Lot Management
The Ultimate Guide To Parking Lot Management: A Comprehensive Guide To Improving Your Operation
Parking facility operators know there are many moving parts – beyond the vehicles in motion – to worry about when managing a lot or garage.
Running a parking facility is a complex task that requires balancing revenue optimization with a focus on aspects of the business like customer service, safety, and traffic flow. These tasks can be quite time-consuming and difficult without the proper technology backing you up.
The good news is that with the right technology and some helpful tips, parking operators can increase the efficiency of their operations, improve the customer experience, enhance their parking revenue, and more. Let’s talk about ways that you can improve your parking lot management.
Having Trouble Managing Your Parking Lot?
Some parking operators struggle with customer satisfaction and creating a stress-free encounter. With the average person spending 17 hours a year looking for a parking space, there is definitely room to improve the customer experience.
For some parking lot operators, the biggest challenges come from creating a safe environment. Studies show that about 40 percent of damage-related car accidents occur in parking lots.
Other operators may need assistance optimizing their revenue and staying on top of the latest innovations. For example, changes continually emerge in the payment space, and it’s important to keep up with payment solutions to ensure a positive customer experience.
An effective parking lot management plan will help with these issues. A good plan optimizes available parking spaces, creates a stress-free and seamless customer experience, and reduces traffic congestion in your parking facility.
Assess Your Operation’s Current Performance
The first step in creating a successful parking lot management plan is to assess where you are today and set goals for where you want to be in the future.
Here are some things to consider when determining how your current operation is performing:
- What are our overall key objectives for the operation?
- How efficient is your operation? Is it profitable?
- Are you properly using your available resources and current staff members?
- Are your customers satisfied?
- What are our biggest challenges, and where could we improve our operations?
The next step is to evaluate your current parking technology. Here are some considerations when it comes to technology:
- What technologies do you currently have in place?
- How well is your current system working?
- What could be improved?
- Could you consolidate or simplify your technology approach?
These questions are not just for management. It’s important to involve team members who are handling day-to-day operations in your assessment. The combination will give you the most comprehensive understanding of where you stand.
Generate In-Depth Data to Better Understand Parkers
With a firm understanding of your current state and some goals for the future, you are ready to tap into in-depth customer data using business intelligence software. This type of software will let you uncover customer behavior trends, identify obstacles in the parking experience, and find areas for improvement.
By tracking customer activity, operators can gain insight into each customer’s parking time purchased, preferred parking location, payment methods, and more. With the help of these insights, you can make meaningful improvements in your customer’s experiences.
Implement New Payment Solutions
Payment solutions are an important aspect of any parking lot management plan – and another way to gather data about your customers. Top payment solutions track the most popular payment methods, the busiest times for your parking facility, and more.
A user-friendly, speedy payment solution also will increase customer satisfaction and keep vehicles moving. You can make payments simple with a contactless payment system.
Optimize Your Pricing and Inventory Management
With the real-time data you are tracking, you can consider solutions indicating space availability or implementing dynamic pricing.
Dealing with variable demand is one of the biggest challenges to parking lot management. You may have periods where your lot is nearly vacant and big events where you are quickly filled to capacity.
Low demand decreases your revenue, while high demand can leave customers frustrated as you turn people away from your full lot. Times with high demand may be difficult to predict and require extra staffing.
With dynamic pricing, you can power up your revenue by charging more during peak demand and lowering rates when you have extra parking capacity.
Get Help From the Experts
Managing your parking lot is challenging, but with the right parking solution, you can optimize revenue and increase customer satisfaction.
Contact one of ParkHub’s parking experts to learn how we can help you achieve your parking operation’s goals.
