August 5th, 2019 / By: Carlos Ponce / Published in: Blog, GBTA
Interview with Ron Rich, CIO The Parking Spot at GTBA 2019.
Airport parking? No worries. We’ve got you covered.
As if air travel was not complicated enough nowadays, sometimes just thinking of the parking hassles and headaches that come with it make us wonder if we should take the bus or train instead. Luckily, there’s The Parking Spot, which is much more than just a space to park your car. TPS focuses on hospitality and customer service, making it easy, comfortable and affordable to get a superior airport parking experience. Founded in 1998, The Parking Spot is the leading near-airport parking company in the United States with 39 locations at 23 airports.
Today during GBTA we had the opportunity to chat with Ron Rich, CIO of The Parking Spot, a company whose offering includes taking the luggage out of the travelers’ trunk for them, loading them into a shuttle, driving them to the airport, getting picked up at the airport, and handing them bottles of water. It’s all about removing the headaches out of airport parking and getting around.
The Journey
“Part of the journey that we’ve done, from a technology standpoint, we have developed every single product that we have since our inception 7 years ago”, says Ron. “One of my first projects was an RGPS systems, where we tracked shuttles throughout the airport, and it certainly had a huge operational impact in the company.”
During our conversation with Ron, it was obvious that TPS has strived to make the customer experience as smooth as possible. Recently, the company has seen greater adoption through the app, as customers become more mobile friendly. Their app is taking over with all the cool new features of a native app.
The Customer Experience: Validating New Ideas
Rich mentioned that they use Net Promoter Scores to validate needs from customers for new features and functionalities. They surveying the customers, who are asked on a scale of 1 to 10, how highly they are likely to recommend the app. TPS’ design and development team has based a lot of the improved features of the app based on such feedback.
Culture and skills set
Before wrapping up, Rich made it clear that The Parking Spot places great focus on strong and sustainable company culture. “Once you find the right people, they might fit culturally into our company, but we also want to expand our culture”. He continues, “We have hired different people from all walks of life. Culture is just as important to us as skills set. If you don’t hold the culture piece, you’re going to end up losing”.