Parker Technology Supports the University of Rochester’s Parking Team

On any university campus, parking plays a crucial role, and effective parking management is important for students, faculty, staff, and visitors.

The University of Rochester, with 12,000 students, over 27,000 full-time staff members, and an academic medical center on campus, requires comprehensive parking services and traffic management solutions to meet the demands of its community.

“We’ve got about 15,000 permit holders,” said Andrew Salmon, Assistant Director of University Transportation & Logistics. “It’s mostly employees who are permit holders because we’re a college and we’re also a hospital.”

The Initial Challenge

One particular area of focus is the university’s hospital garage, where customer service and traffic flow are critically important. The garage was staffed with manned booths until Parker Technology was selected to install automated exit gates and pay stations – a significant change for users. The implementation of this technology allowed Parking & Logistics to optimize operations while staff members previously assigned to booth operations were redeployed to other essential roles within the department.

“When we decided to put TIBA equipment into our main hospital garage, Parker was the recommended vendor. You have an integrated solution with TIBA, so it was a clear-cut decision,” said Salmon. “We were looking to improve the customer experience and improve operational efficiencies.”
Andrew Salmon, Assistant Director of University Transportation and Logistics

TIBA and Parker have built an API (software) bridge between two innovative platforms. Instead of manning parking booths, a customer service representative is able to manage the rate at which vehicles are able to enter or exit the garage, raise the gate, lookup monthly permit holders and their status, validate or comp parking tickets, and maintain detailed audits for each transaction.

The Initial Implementation

Once the University of Rochester began implementing the solution, all the dominoes started to fall into place. Automation typically prompts increases in customer inquiries, so it’s important to have a customer call center ready to receive and manage issues. Parker Technology began taking the university’s intercom calls during nights and weekends.

“It was seamless. It was straightforward,” Salmon stated. “When we started off, we didn’t really know what to anticipate. Again, we previously had manned booths handling questions. Just to give you an idea, when we signed up with Parker, they were answering intercom calls during the evening and weekend hours. We anticipated this to be only 250 calls/month. Today, we’re at 12,000 calls/month.”

Exploring Data Insights and Refining Operations

On the heels of unexpected call volume, the University of Rochester is beginning to harness the power of data provided by Parker Technology’s platform, and with guidance from Parker Technology’s Client Success Team, the university is exploring how to monitor parking behaviors and identify patterns, such as repeated free exits, to further refine their operations and enhance security.

Bret Smith, Client Success Specialist at Parker Technology and part of the Client Success Team, schedules ongoing meetings with Parker Technology customers to review data, make recommendations, and ensure that all business rules and processes are running smoothly.

“We all know where the system stands, and to just get information from one another where we can grow and talk about what we can do to help each other,” said Aurelia Ruiz, a university Parking Operations Supervisor.

Through ongoing client success meetings between the University of Rochester and Parker Technology, the university was able to start assisting the deaf community in the same ways that other parkers receive assistance.

“Rochester has a large deaf community. I reached out to Bret, and he was very quick in his response. He let me know of an option to assist the deaf community through the Parker Technology solution. It was great to utilize this part of Parker Technology to better serve all of our customers.”
Aurelia Ruiz, Parking Operations Supervisor

Partnership Beyond Communication

With Parker Technology taking calls during nights and weekends, the University of Rochester staffed their help call lines during the day and occasionally still felt the impact of COVID with staffing challenges.

“Early on, when we had some staffing issues. If we ran into a situation where we had a couple of people calling in sick, and it looked like it would be really tough for us to answer calls, Parker has been very helpful and responsive on short notice. If we called or emailed them and asked if Parker could handle daytime calls, I don’t recall one instance where they said ‘no’ to us. So that’s been a tremendous help for us as well.” - Andrew Salmon, Assistant Director of University Transportation and Logistics

“The CSRs assist us when we are short-staffed and are awesome about reaching out to us when they have questions. They call us directly for clarity about our employees, guests, or our rules and how we implement them here at the university,” stated Ruiz.

Future Outlook

As the relationship between the University of Rochester and Parker Technology continues, both Andrew Salmon and Aurelia Ruiz expressed positive feelings about Parker Technology continuing to support the University of Rochester team.

Want to learn more about how Parker Technology can transform your parking operations? Check out other university case studies or reach out to hear specifically how we can help you and your team enhance the customer experience.

About Parker Technology 

For parking operators who have limited resources to manage intercom and inbound customer service calls, Parker Technology combines parking domain expertise, a flexible software platform and their professional customer service center, or your staff, to ensure customer problems are resolved efficiently and according to the facility’s business rules. Parker helps clients create a better customer experience, while collecting more revenue, keeping traffic moving, freeing up internal staff to focus on higher-priority on-site tasks, and gathering data insights to run operations more effectively. Learn more at parkertechnology.com.