The following article was written to help the parking industry improve its communication with customers. It was originally published in the Parking Professional Magazine. It might help you communicate with your customers, or, better yet, help you advise your clients in ways to improve their communication with customers.
Parking as a Second Language
In a world of constant change and a knowledge economy, effective communication has become more important than ever. Communication is especially important in the parking industry. Policies, procedures and a market that has more demand than supply combine to make communication a difficult prospect for the parking professional.
Professionals in the parking industry understand that their business is a combination of art and science. Consultants and parking administrators have developed formulas for projecting parking demand and future parking needs based upon certain development scenarios. This is the science. The science is often difficult to communicate because of the jargon used in this industry. Terms like “effective supply”, “parking geometrics”, “functional design”, “level of service”, “parking demand ratios”, and “user group analysis” are all understood by parking professionals, but need to be translated for everyone else in the world. How good are we as translators? If parking professionals are not understood what happens to the image of the industry?
When you bring art into the equation, the language really changes. Art is required because the collection of data represents only a snapshot in time.
What happens if the snapshot changes? What about the peculiarities of the downtown or campus that don’t fit the formula or model? Art is the professional’s personal experience. Experience allows adjustments for the quirks that are often presented in interpreting and analyzing the data. Communicating the art component and its intangible characteristics often leaves the politician, business leader, housewife or English teacher with a puzzled look followed by a “can you explain that for me?”
Responding to the puzzled look results in another 15 minutes of dialogue without a definitive answer. Colorful PowerPoint slides don’t make the translation process any easier.
The answer users want is their parking space. Users of hospital, downtown or campus parking have a simple need: an open parking space that is convenient to their final destination. Although most people have become accustomed to paying for parking, everyone would prefer that it is free. It is easier for a conservative politician to communicate a desire to support a liberal tax increase without voting for it than it is for a parking professional to communicate the reasons why parking isn’t free and will no longer be convenient. After all, parking is free at the mall. Sometimes a parking professional appreciates industry jargon because it confuses the message.
“If the parking generator had an effective supply of 20 percent of the total zone equivalent, with corresponding parking geometrics and levels of service, we would not be forced to increase rates to this degree. You asked for a Cadillac and we gave you one,” is one way to confuse a parking rate increase. It is a way to win a battle and lose the war.
Even if it is easier for parking professionals to win a series of battles, it is important to have a strategic communications plan in place to be in position to win the war. This is especially important when the science gives way to art.
Communicating the art factor is needed when the local market and users of parking facilities react differently to the parking environment. For example, there was a consultant that had projected the need for a large parking structure to support a downtown retail development. The structure was built and paid for with revenue bonds.
When the revenue projections were not being met, fingers started pointing. The pointing was being done by lawyers, politicians, media, consultants and developers. It was a community with a downtown development district and county economic development group that competed with the city’s parking professionals. Even within the city framework, parking was at odds with finance and economic development.
The media had reported that the consultant had failed to assess the local market needs in the context of user perceptions. It seems that people parking in downtown were reluctant to park in structured parking. They would rather find street parking several blocks outside of the “normal” walking distance zone (another popular industry term needing translation). It also had to do with the City’s decision to leave street meter rates lower per hour than the new parking structure. The combination created conflict. Assessments of user psychology are not in a consultant’s typical scope of services for a downtown or campus parking study. In addition, a consultant recommending market rates or higher for street parking is usually listened to. However, in this instance the politicians refused to raise the on-street meter rates to silence constituent’s complaints. The consultant had warned about the consequences of not raising on-street meter rates. Memories can be short when communication strategies have not been used in the study process.
In another example, a City completed a downtown parking study, with the results tied to a bond refinance. The underwriters questioned the consultant about the ability of the private sector to build structured parking in the downtown over the next several years. Underwriters were concerned that private developers could build and lease parking at below market rates. The private market was not financially viable for structured parking, according to the consultant when land costs, taxes and construction costs were factored in. Private rates would have to be $3.00 per day higher than city rates in order to meet pro forma numbers.
If a private entity developed a parking structure, the rates would have to be at least 40 percent higher than the proposed rate increases expected to be approved by the City to support the bond refinance, according to the consultant. The bonds were sold based upon these assumptions for an unencumbered revenue stream.
Everything was fine until an economic development initiative started by a state/county coalition to secure a large company headquarters in downtown included a subsidized parking structure. Early on the city’s parking professionals indicated they didn’t want to own the facility because of long-term maintenance concerns. They were also financially strapped and saw tax increment financing as the only way the structure could be developed. The potential negative impact on the city-owned parking revenue stream was never evaluated. After the development deal was approved, the company discovered the structure had at least 500 extra parking spaces and announced plans to lease those spaces to anyone needing parking in downtown. The structure will be completed 18 months before the headquarters is occupied, allowing all 3000 parking spaces to be leased at below market rates for those 18 months. In addition, when the building opens many of the people working there will be transferring from other buildings in downtown. Many of those people are currently using city-owned parking facilities. There is a possibility that the city’s parking revenue stream will suffer in a couple of years.
Politicians in another city sold the highest revenue generating parking structure to a development team without considering bond covenants, market cost of the real estate or replacement cost of new parking. This happened because parking was not at the table and the downtown development people told the politicians it was a “good economic development” deal. The warden in the movie, Cool Hand Luke, gave us the answer to this dilemma when he told Paul Newman, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
The parking professionals in all of these examples were not proactive in presenting their needs to parties that could negatively impact their operations. Finding a seat at the downtown or campus development table takes diligence. It is a seat that is not advertised or solicited. People at the table live by the golden rule, he who has the gold rules. Parking is gold.
The organizational structures of the city or campus often preclude parking from any real input before development decisions are made. Even if this is the case, parking needs to get the ear of the administrators above them in order to maintain a positive flow of information. Otherwise parking will follow the Japanese proverb, “Vision without action is a dream; action without vision is a nightmare.”
How could communications have helped these situations? I made a presentation at the 2000 IPI Convention titled, “Size Doesn’t Matter: How Parking is Driving Downtown Renewal” that focused on the need of parking professionals to create partnerships with downtown constituents through communication. Parking professionals need to create alliances with chambers of commerce, economic development groups, downtown development districts, business owners, education entities, etc.
Whenever the seed of growth or development is planted, parking professionals have to be at the table. If they are not present, parking will suffer. Remember, no one wants to pay for parking and you are the villain making them pay. Staying in an adversarial position is a no win situation for the parking professional. There is a saying, “If you are not at the table, then you are probably on the menu.” Parking professionals should take this seriously.
How does the industry add value to the downtown or campus? What is it worth and who are the beneficiaries? These are two questions that begin the dialogue of alliance building. The importance of these alliances goes beyond the synergy created when multiple groups come together for a common goal. Parking needs friends not enemies when they go before politicians or boards of regents for rate, fee and fine increases. Parking professionals need to be alliance builders and communicate their active participation.
Some parking departments have used customer focus groups to learn what is important to users of their facilities. Focus groups are a valuable form of market research that is not used enough in the parking industry.
Parking professionals have to communicate the value of the parking system, including how integral it is to renewal and development. This is also true on a campus, but with a different sphere of influence. Campus parking professionals need alliances with admissions, athletics, students, faculty, human resources, the president/chancellor as well as the board of regents.
Because America has entered another time of tuition increases, it will be extremely difficult to receive approval for parking rate increases. Therefore, communication becomes a critical component of parking planning. The theme for the knowledge economy is not who you know or what you know, but how you communicate your message to the people who need to know. Simply put, they are the customers who pay for parking and, ultimately, control the purse strings.
The industry’s parking consultants have not addressed the communication aspects of parking planning because their core competencies are in engineering and design. Communication is a discipline that comes out of journalism and marketing schools.
However, more importantly, the communication process has not been addressed because its importance was not a priority. Limited resources point the client toward a minimal scope of services assessment.
In addition, the city and campus environment have separate departments for communications. Parking does not want to take on the responsibility of another department or pay for services that should be included in another department. Again, we go back to alliances. Does the parking professional wait for the Finance Department to sell revenue bonds before asking for a meeting? Not usually.
In the same way, parking professionals need to create alliances with other departments to ensure that communications is a focal point for every parking improvement or assessment. If there is a communications-related department outside of parking, the parking professional should look at the annual communications plan to determine how much of the budget is devoted to parking. Speak their language or be ready to translate parking for them. If the staff of that department is not comfortable with parking communications strategies, then determine whether outsourcing those services is possible. Once the budget is approved, it is very difficult to change or alter its scope. Parking professionals know the level of difficulty based upon their own budget development and approval process.
Communications also has to be integral to the training for parking staff. This is extremely important for any staff member who deals directly with the public. Common courtesy and polite behavior are the foundation for molding employees into parking professionals focused on customer service. Does your training program have a communications focus?
Finally, parking should not be the language you use with customers. If your customers need to use a definition of terms in order to understand your system, you have missed a communications opportunity. Common words and consistent use of terms should be your priority.
Your system might include parking lots, remote lots, reserved lots, surface lots, car parks, garages, structured parking, parking structures, street parking, meter parking, free parking, two-hour parking, restricted parking, accessible parking, single thread helixes, ramps, double threads, side-by-side, pay-on-foot, cashier, and other phrases taken for granted by the parking industry. Successful parking departments keep signage and graphics simple and consistent for the users of their facilities. In addition, these departments have started to add amenities to their parking services.
The only thing constant about the parking industry is change. Communicating changes to your customers is the best way to be successful in this industry.
Communication at each step of the process not only produces feedback for positive change, but also bridges the gap of understanding between the parking industry and the general public. That is a process we can all afford to adopt.
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