Nowadays, consumers expect as little friction as possible in all areas of their life, and parking is no exception. For parking facilities, creating a welcoming, convenient, and safe parking experience for customers is the key to driving success. The parking environment, including entrances, exits, lighting, gates, stairwells, etc. needs to deliver this smooth experience in a way that customers can comfortably go about their business and naturally want to come back. Understandably, this can be a tough ask. Still, facilities that fall below patron expectations require time, capital, and manpower to repair the damage that crime and a poor reputation can bring.
There are considerable challenges for parking facilities to consider when looking to grow and protect their patrons and parking experience. For example, there are many access points and at the same time numerous secluded places. This environment challenges common security solutions such as on-site security. Guards cannot be everywhere at once, and they often only observe and report, not intervene. Video verification is also limited as teams can get overwhelmed with video. These challenges open the door for unwanted guests and unwelcome behavior that scare patrons. Below we will discuss five parking facilities' best practices when selecting a proactive solution that will protect patron satisfaction and the parking atmosphere through intelligent security.
Full Facility Coverage
Full-facility coverage security is key. Not only will this ensure better monitoring and visibility, it also enables better risk management as issues, such as drug dealing and camping can be spotted as soon as they arise – despite efforts to hide – and addressed early on.
Eliminate Human Error
Traditional security solutions like video surveillance and verification have weaknesses because of their reliance on humans for certain tasks. For example, video surveillance manned by humans often struggles with challenges like limited attention spans, the limit of screens to video feeds, the inability to detect all abnormalities, and desensitization to false alarms. Facilities should look to solutions that offer artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities. These technologies aren't subject to the above challenges and are particularly valuable after hours when unwanted guests are identifiable and monitoring labor is more expensive due to waking hour conflicts.
Taking Action Before Damage
In order to fully protect something, action must be taken before damage occurs. Parking facilities can get significantly more value from solutions that empower their facility to be protected proactively. Security solutions that don't take action before harm occurs are not providing "protection". They are collecting evidence. Solutions that focus on border protection tend to detect risks earlier which offers more response time. Solutions that also offer live talk-downs can proactively deter unwanted behavior.
System Transparency
Transparent solutions offer critical visibility into the vendor's operations and acts as motivation for the vendor to maintain quality services. Security solutions that don't offer simple and streamlined access to client footage harbor avenues that can harm their clients. For example, incidents can go unreported. System health checks also support both transparency of service and site protection readiness.
Success Metrics
Facilities that opt for solutions with success metrics will be ahead of their peers. The availability of these valuable metrics can inform decision-makers on the success of a solution and enable justification of the solution rather than blind trust. Metrics also provide facilities insight into weak areas so improvements can be made. Examples of metrics include counts of risks detected, confirmed, and deterred, and detail-rich incident-specific reports.
Choosing Proactive Security
When creating a modern, welcoming, safe and secure environment for customers to access, choosing a robust security solution is a key component of insuring a facility’s brand and reputation. This is where proactive security comes into play. Proactive solutions like Proactive Video Monitoring (PVM) are well-established security solutions that leverage AI, technology strengths, and expert intervention specialists to monitor, detect, assess, intervene, and deter threats before an incident occurs.
By identifying and deterring gateway risks, such as loiters and trespassers, PVM has a higher probability of preventing damaging and illicit activities on parking facility property, such as vandalism, drug use, and prostitution. So how does this all work?
PVM utilizes specialized AI software which detects risky anomalies while ignoring false alarms. Once an anomaly is detected, incident specialists are alerted of the issue. This highly trained and experienced team quickly reviews the live footage to address the scene. If the alert is a risk, the specialist will issue a talk-down to the perpetrator within moments of the initial signal. Specific PVM solutions have stopped more than 100,000 crimes and are proven to be 98% effective.
Designing, building, and maintaining the best customer parking experience is crucial to business operations. For parking facilities looking to strengthen their security, and ROI, choosing proactive solutions is a financially sound investment and level of insurance that protects people, assets, and property, while giving facility owners peace of mind.
“Want to learn more? Check out our website or download our parking infographic here https://info.netwatchusa.com/l/931423/2022-09-26/3lynk”
