Customer experience and your car park

It may sound premature, but Christmas isn’t as far away as many people think, and for businesses being prepared for that peak trading period can make a huge difference to how successful your entire year has been.

Shopping can be stressful at the best of times without problem parking heaping more fuel on the fire and damaging how customers view your brand.

In this blog, we are looking at how your car park can enhance your customer experience and, in the process, make life easier for your staff during busy peak trading periods.

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The perils of poor parking

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. You arrive at a car park, it’s cold, raining, and incredibly busy. You are doing last-minute shopping, the last thing you need is a queue to park.

You are already stressed, but you need to park in an EV bay, but this is taken up by a car that isn’t even electric. This adds more frustration to your trip. Ask yourself, at this point are you in a mindset that would make you likely to buy?

None of these are the fault of your staff. But they are the people who will bear the brunt of complaints, which slows down their ability to deal with other customers, which creates more complaints. Impacting customer service across your store.

These are common issues that impact retailers, and they all start, and can all be prevented, on your car park.

Making your car park customer-friendly

There are ways to make your car park better, not just at peak trading times, but all year round, that can have a major impact on your business.

Better accessibility

Customers want to be able to park in the spaces that suit them. Whether that’s parking in a Blue Badge space, a parent & child bay or getting to charge their EV while they shop.

Bay Management can help you to protect the important spaces on your car park, coupled with parking validation this can ensure that those accessible spaces are reserved for those who need them.

Eliminating the misuse of those bays can get rid of a major source of complaints, which saves your staff time that can be used to serve and help other customers.

Better space turnover

Putting car park management solutions in place can help you to create a free-flowing parking environment. This means that existing customers can easily leave the site while new customers flow in.

This minimises congestion and lets more people make use of your business. Perfect during peak trading to maximise the number of people visiting your store and coming through your tills.

More people visiting, in theory, means more people buying and better returns and performance.

Services to attract new customers

You can use your car park to attract new customers to your store. Better accessibility makes your site a more. Attractive destination anyway, but services like EV charging can make you a go-to destination for shoppers who can plug in while they browse.

EV charging opens a whole new revenue stream, the same goes for Pre-booking. If your store is near to other attractions, like a football ground or event space, for example, you could offer up available spaces. People park on your site and go elsewhere but are more likely to browse on the way back or when they arrive to pass the time.

Turn quieter periods into sales opportunities

Pre-booking doesn’t just help when you’re near a popular attraction. It can support your business when you’re quieter too. Opening the surplus space on your car park during periods when you’re less busy promotes your site to drivers in the area looking for parking.

It works like free advertising, driving people to your business who might have otherwise never visited. Giving you a prime opportunity to convert more people into loyal customers.

Helping you to make much more of your car park

A car park has a wealth of untapped potential, which, if you know how to access it, can work wonders on how a business performs and a brand is perceived.

At Parkingeye, we understand the pressures businesses are under to perform and how simple changes to a car park can reap major rewards for businesses.

To find out more about how we can support your car park and your store, get in touch using our contact form.