Today, we are going to look at the impact this new world of parking management has on the owners and our customers.  For this to have meaning, we need to take a quick look at the past (paper tickets from a ticket spitter, cash, and a booth attendant) and then zoom forward to this new ability we have to know the customer and communicate with them. 

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When I first entered the parking industry 46 years ago, I was fortunate to work directly for the man who created today's parking industry; my faithful readers know exactly who I am talking about here.  In those early days of parking, most of our locations were leases.  In a parking lease, the parking operator had to determine how much a facility could make under the current management and then bet the farm through lease payments.  Operators had to be skilled enough to guarantee that we could pay somewhere between 65 and 75% of the property's income as guaranteed rent. The remaining income had to cover all payroll and operating expenses (maintenance, utilities, insurance, and property taxes).  Whatever was left, if any, was profit.  And those details were the easy part of the job.  We'll get to the hard part in just a moment.  

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At this point in the parking industry timeline, facility managers lived a strange occupational reality where three truths prevailed. First, parking operators generated millions of dollars in revenue, $1.50 at a time. Each quarter had to be collected, counted, and deposited. Second, every single dollar collected mattered, as it painstakingly formed the owed lease amount. Expenses were kept low and rare, as they robbed the coffers too quickly. And finally, building owners often considered parking revenue paltry compared to what the office buildings, municipalities, hospitals, airports, and universities were making. Therefore, since building owners thought our contribution was very small, they did not look closely at the details of what we do. In short, parking managers received no value from anywhere. Ever. 

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I have advanced in skills and age, technology has changed, and time has ruthlessly marched on, but the one thing that hasn’t budged is how the world perceives the parking industry or how the parking industry sees itself. But my view of our value has changed. With decades of experience, countless stories, and much more white hair, I – and the whole TPN team - advocate for parking managers to building owners. Parking managers, you have one tough job! We would like to see a change in how our clients and their customers view parking.  

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Today, parking professionals can deliver high customer service for a low price, allowing owners to earn a higher profit. The building owners who have called us to oversee revenue and operations have benefited from my roots in controlling revenue and expenses to ensure the millions of dollars I promised in rent were available. Those quarter-counting skills transmit valuable oversight for our clients.   

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Now, back to when I said that was the easy part: imagine you are the manager of several booth attendants who collect millions of dollars six quarters at a time, with a fee computer that rarely works and no real method of counting cars. We had facilities like this spread all over the city and we were responsible for paying all the bills. We offered impeccable customer service, wearing only a suit & tie and a smile.  Managing that parking operation was, looking back, almost impossible.  Today, that same group is managing a parking industry that is even more difficult (we deal with more than quarters now), more valuable, but much less costly.   

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In the past, the interaction between parking professionals and parking customers was really very small.  Your customer pulled a ticket or used their prox card when they entered, and when they exited, the paying clients either went to a Pay-on-Foot machine or just drove up to the parking booth and handed their ticket and a few dollars to the attendant.  As long as all the machinery worked, it was "Have a nice day" and they were on their way. Today, your parking operator is a lot more involved with interaction with your customers than before, and their ability can dramatically impact income. The impact is mainly through direct contact, online customer service, and managing time and services.  This dramatic transformation is through new entry and exit technologies, gathering detailed customer information, and communicating more and more information directly to the customer about space availability, payment methods, changing rates, and penalties for not following a new set of rules.   

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As we at TPN manage our services, we see the impact of the parking operation on the owners’ (and our clients') businesses.  We are amazed every day at this totally new level of findings that our audits and consulting services are experiencing.  It has been especially interesting and challenging to see the discussions in our weekly company meetings take on a whole new excitement because of the new improvements we can deliver to our clients.   

Today, the parking operator gets the license plate from your car, your name and address, your email address, and your credit card information.  We also have what should be considered as subcontractors, the aggregators interacting with your clients almost in the name of the operator or your facility.  Your clients get parking availability and rates from your operator or this subcontractor, so they communicate with them directly.  This level of direct communication with your clients just did not exist a few years ago.  Now the parking operation is touching your clients in ways you never considered.  In just a few short years, parking and how it impacts your property and clients have changed dramatically.  And it is changing how we manage our parking operations.