Over at the “Parking Matters Blog” Frank Giles does an admirable job of giving ideas on how to make customer service in a fully automated garage friendly, warm, and cuddly. If I was forced to have a Automated Customer Service operation, I would want Frank to design it.
I wrote earlier of Uber and Lyft and their potential impact on parking. I said that we need to think outside the box to fight off the end of parking as we know it. One idea is to make the parking experience the best possible. I know that automating garages is de rigueur these days basically to save money and increase efficiency. Fair Enough.
But I’m not sure, about automated customer service. When you automate a garage, you remove cashiers, a manager, assistant manager, and all sorts of other staff. Is there any way to keep just one person on site to interact with your customers?
Hire personality. Have someone there who can make the customer feel welcome, solve problems, give information, and be the face of your company. Surely you could figure out a way that this person could increase revenue enough to pay their salary – If your garage has a $20 max, you would need only about 10 additional cars a day to cover the cost.
There is no way that machines, phones, central control rooms, even video, can replace an actual person who is trained (Disney style) to be there to help. Wells Fargo Bank knows this, so they are requiring their branch managers to stand in the lobby and assist their customers. Not some clerk, but the managers. Think how much they learn about their operation by getting out from behind a desk and talking to people.
Frank will make his Automated Customer Service the best it can be, but he won’t be able to make it better than a real live person standing in front of you, ready to help.
JVH
One Response
This is really a great idea to increase efficiency at garage. The concept of automated customer service would also help the customer to save his time. Thanks for sharing.