According to IBISWorld, the U.S. parking industry is a $8.2 billion dollar business as of 2022 and is now estimated to reach $12 billion in 2023. While customer service and appearance are crucial, risk management and integrity are the fundamental foundation of any parking operations.
How consistent are your employees when it comes to implementing standard business procedures? It’s important that these standards are met to satisfy consumer expectations, cultivate brand loyalty, and streamline operations to maximize profits. Developing these standard practices costs your business a lot of money and time, including training and re-training your staff to perform consistently.
What is the best way to determine if these standards are being met, and how can you capture measurable results to verify success or failure? Could mystery shopper insights help protect your business? Let’s explore.
The Era of Yelp, Twitter & TikTok
The popularity of review sites such as Yelp and Google, coupled with the rise of social media platforms such as Twitter and TikTok, has drastically changed the way parking operators receive customer feedback. Social media has become a key factor to forging and maintaining meaningful customer relationships; however, this engagement isn’t always positive. Unchecked trolling, toxic remarks, and harmful comments can quickly damage your reputation and negatively impact your parking program.
Quantifying the impact of negative comments can be a bit complex, but ignoring comments or reacting too late can potentially escalate an issue or cause a PR nightmare. Think about this, according to Adweek Magazine, negative information is 63 percent more likely to be clicked on than positive information. This means that social media algorithms are designed to maximize such signals and are bound to spread negative information. To further this point, Igniyte, an online reputation management company, reported that 1 in 3 businesses feel that negative social media posts are the greatest threat to their reputation.
Direct customer feedback via social media could act as a trigger to engage a mystery shopper that can focus on a particular department or area of interest in your business. For example, a parking operator who enforces regulations across multiple lots throughout a metro area may notice an uptick in online or social media complaints regarding a particular enforcement zone or area. That operator could request an in-depth mystery shopper report specifically focused on that enforcement zone. Previously, this type of customized service was historically only accessible to enterprise-level companies that could pay top dollar for specially trained mystery shoppers, but now, thanks to improved access and technology, it’s affordable for much of the parking industry.
New Technology
Today, mystery shopping services leverage high-tech methods for capturing and verifying information and standardizing the process resulting in better data for you, the parking operator. Better reporting and the use of dynamic dashboards allow you to filter through assessments and create the ability to analyze and make decisions in real time.
Leveraging the same methods and technology, mystery shopping companies can also utilize geo-tracking to confirm shoppers are going where they say they’re going to ensure accurate findings and reporting. Mobile devices allow for Quality Assurance reports to be submitted faster, and in some cases, as the “shop” is occurring. To further optimize efforts and allow operators to request specific feedback, the use of apps versus writing out a statement or filling out a web form has become the preferred method and approach to capturing information.
When I was an operator utilizing mystery shopping, the biggest change in technology at the time was the ability to use covert video solutions. When Servimer first introduced covert video technology to the parking industry it was a game changer. They used this technology in an enforcement environment and discovered that the entire collections team was working together to swap revenue cannisters. It provided irrefutable evidence of fraud and led to prosecuting the offenders. Another important outcome of covert video and mystery shopping solutions is it gave us real examples of both positive and negative customer experiences that we could use when training staff.
I Spy
Mystery shoppers can be deployed not just to your own parking operation, but to other parking locations, as well. This gives insight into how your competitors are operating and what you can do to improve your own business. Through mystery shopping, you can determine:
• What are their products/services?
• What do they charge/pricing?
• What’s their average wait time for customer service and checkout?
• What are their business hours?
The Bottom Line
When it comes to feedback on your business, the more accurate and detailed it is can make all the difference. As compared to feedback given by a customer who spends a minimal amount of time engaged in your business, the feedback you get from a mystery shopper tends to be far more comprehensive and accurate because the person giving the feedback focuses entirely on the experience and therefore makes more conscious observations.
The bottom line is this, you cannot possibly be in all places at all times to observe your business to the extent it needs to be. Even if you could, your presence would likely alter the true behavior of people who know they’re being observed. And while online feedback from customers is valuable, it’s not the only way or even the best way to find out how your parking operation functions when you are not around.
Katherine Beaty is Executive Vice President of Customer Experience for TEZ Technology. She can be reached at katherine@teztechnology.com
