Our Top 3 Tips for Systematically Improving the Parking Experience

Before we dive into the tips, let’s clarify what we mean by parking experience:
Everything your tenants and parking customers encounter — from contracts and access, to payment, communication and day-to-day usability.
In short: the complete customer journey of parking with you.

Ready? Let's dive into the tips...

Tip 1: Use Personas & Customer Journeys to Identify Pain Points

If you're not familiar with personas, here’s a quick definition:
A persona is a fictional but realistic representation of one of your customer segments — for example “Electric-Vehicle Owner Ellen.”

Personas help you understand your customers’ needs, behaviours and motivations.
Once you’ve defined one or more personas, you can map out customer journeys for different situations your customers face.

Example 1: Electric-Vehicle Owner Ellen is running late for a meeting

Ellen ends a video call and rushes out the door.
She gets to the garage — but has forgotten her physical keycard.
She calls support, gives her licence plate, and gets the gate opened manually.
Inside, her EV has charged overnight, but she’s still unsure how the billing works.
After unplugging, she calls support again to open the exit gate.

What Ellen’s journey reveals

A few quick wins become obvious:

• A digital key in a parking app would eliminate the need for physical cards
• Clear in-app laddning & payment information would prevent confusion
• Support could proactively help first-time EV users based on usage stats
• One unified parking & charging app would reduce friction end-to-end

This is the power of persona-based journey mapping:
you visualise problems before they create customer dissatisfaction.

Example 2: New Tenant Noah wants to join the parking waiting list

Noah has just moved in. Everything is set—except parking.
He calls the landlord, is told the waiting time is “six months,” and that he’ll receive a paper agreement by post when a space becomes available.
He hangs up uncertain:
Will it take six months? Longer? Shorter? How does he check his position? Should he call every month?

What Noah’s journey reveals

There’s huge room for improvement:

• Automated digital queues would give Noah real-time position & expected waiting time
• Digital site maps would let him choose spaces (e.g., near the elevator)
• Digital contract signing with BankID removes friction and postal delays
• A customer portal would let him update preferences, contact details and more

Again: customer journeys make hidden problems visible — and solvable.

Tip 2: Measure Customer Satisfaction Specifically for Parking

Most companies measure customer satisfaction — but rarely for parking as a standalone service.

If you truly want to improve the parking experience, you need insight into:

• What works well
• What causes frustration
• What feels unclear or inconvenient
• What customers want more (or less) of

A simple recurring survey works well.
We recommend starting with NPS (Net Promoter Score) specifically for parking. Based on our experience, the score is often low before digitalisation — and increases significantly once the parking journey becomes easier.

To get deeper insights, you can send short micro-surveys triggered by events:

• After using EV charging
• After joining the waiting list
• After signing a contract
• After support interaction
• After a parking session in a guest garage

Send via SMS, email or push notifications depending on your channels.

More data = better decisions.

Tip 3: Simplify, simplify, simplify

This is arguably the most powerful tip.
Make simplicity a core part of your internal culture.

Encourage your team to continuously:

• Challenge existing workflows
• Question unnecessary steps
• Test the parking experience themselves
• Use customer feedback to redesign processes
• Remove friction wherever possible

Ask yourselves:

• Do we really need physical permits?
• Can guest parking be fully camera-based (ANPR)?
• Can tenants receive parking & charging on the same invoice?
• Would card payments or app activation reduce friction?
• Can we automate this process entirely?

When your entire organisation is aligned around making parking easier, the customer experience naturally improves.

And the result?

• More satisfied tenants
• Higher retention
• Greater willingness to try new services (like EV charging)
• Higher acceptance for change
• Stronger long-term revenue

If you want more guidance on communicating changes to customers, we have a full article about it too — check it out here.

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