YOUR heart sinks as you approach your car. The left back tyre’s completely flat, and you have no idea how to change it. If that’s not bad enough, imagine the CBD hourly parking bill you’d chalk up by the time you get everything sorted out.

If you’re a Metro Parker, you have nothing to fear, as one lady customer found out. Just approach the customer service officer (CSO) or customer service executive (CSE), who is equipped with skills beyond just service with a smile.

Not only did the customer get her tyre changed, her parking fee was also waived out of goodwill.

Sharing this real-life situation that occurred a few months ago, Metro Parking Pte Ltd managing director Tyrone Lopez illustrated how far his company’s employees have come since the days of the jaga kereta (car watchmen).

Metro Parking takes pride in being at the forefront of technology, which has seen parking management evolve from the manual system, to auto-pay machines, to today’s CashCard payment system used in all its 22 car parks across the island.

“Technology has made us less reliant on manpower,” said Mr. Lopez. “But the people that we have now have different skill sets.”

Technology has also freed the CSOs from the minute-to-minute operations, allowing their to focus more on customer service. To help reinforce the different mindset needed, the 50 or so car park attendants, who were previously called operations assistants, were given the title of Customer Service Officers.

But, technology’s drawback is its facelessness, and not just to customers. It sometimes displaces employees as well.

“In 1998-99, when we were chasing technology in parking, we were so immersed in this that we forgot about our operations assistants,” said Mr. Lopez.

“We just assumed that they would automatically be able to manage the system and we ran into a brick wall. Because we found that the parking attendants of yesterday couldn’t cope with the technology … and many dropped out. That’s where Work Redesign came it. The methods of training had to change.”

Work Redesign came in as the company was embarking on its People Developer (PD) path. After a toss-up between ISO certification or PD in end-1998, Metro Parking chose to obtain the latter.

“ISO is procedural – there’s no human element in it, you just follow by the book”, said Mr Lopez. Being in a service industry, it was important for Metro Parking that the emphasis was on developing its employees.

“We went into PD because we wanted to be given a system that we can call our own, something that will benefit our people.”

It is “a big problem area” finding computer literate people who are willing to work in car parks, Mr. Lopez admitted. The company tackled this problem through training – even for those who have zero computer knowledge – provided they were willing to be trained. Trainee CSOs undergo a five week on-the-job Certified Car Park Management Course (CCPM) during which they are taught to operate the car park computer software, maintenance and troubleshooting, and to generate daily reports.

Besides administration training, procedures and processes, and situational simulation, the course includes a customer service module, which teaches trainees the finer points in delivering excellent service, from housekeeping to grooming to communicating with customers.

“Their competency set has to change,” said Mr. Oliver Teo, the company’s Learning and Development Manager. “CSOs now have other functions to full, not just collecting the money.”

Metro Parking also invests in external value-added courses for its CSOs, such as first aid and basic security. The company will soon be embarking on a basic car maintenance course for its CSOs, so that they can help jump-start a customer’s stalled car, for example.

Last September, Metro Parking sent about 20 of its heads of department, administrative supervisors and customer service executives (who supervise the CSOs) for SPRING Singapore’s Work Redesign Manager Course. “We got insight on what a structured Work Redesign would entail, as well as the commitments,” said Mr. Teo: This gives them the grounding to redesign other jobs in the future, such as those of the administrators and the CSEs.

Now, every employee in Metro Parking has a formal career development path set out for him, as well as a formal training programme to meet the expectations of both the company and the employees in terms of career development. This puts an end to the preconception that being a car park attendant is a dead-end job.

“You have a happy employee because he or she knows there are some prospects,” said Mr. Lopez.

“Some people would argue whether this leads to better business results, but a highly-motivated employee will work his heart out – we try to install the ‘Metro passion’ in them. The obvious outcome would be better business results.”

Metro Parking is practicing People Developer standards to realize its goal of becoming the number one in the parking management industry
By Judy Kan
THE STRAITS TIMES : MONDAY November 13, 2000 [PEOPLE EXCELLENCE 2000]

Making the change is easy when one is driven by a strong, clear vision.

For Mr Tyrone Lopez, managing director of Metro Parking, it is to be number one in the carpark management industry in Singapore.

It is a realistic aim for the current Number Three, and the company is convinced that adopting the People Developer standard is a key step to achieving it.

First to take up PDS

Metro Parking, the first carpark operator to be awarded the standard, has 80 staff members. It operates 25 car parks in Singapore, including those at Shaw Centre, Century Square, Loyang Point, Orchard Cineleisure and Eastpoint Mall.

Much soul-searching was done before it decided to proceed, and management had to change its outlook and mindset.

Being in the business for so long, we have to think out of the box. lt’s easy to stay put and not move. But looking ahead, there needs to be renewal and change must come about if we want to lead the industry into the new age,” said Mr Lopez.

Finally, with an initial $50,000 investment, Metro Parking “bit the bullet”. There has been no looking back since.

Roadmap to growth The People Developer standard not only provides a roadmap for the company to achieve its business goals, it also ensures that these are in synch with expectations and needs of individuals within the company.

‘One of the thrusts of PD is, you chart the career path of employees, establish skills and knowledge levels, so they know what your expectations are. If there’s a gap, we seek to reduce it through training” said Mr Lopez.

For Metro Parking, this has led to the establishment of full-fledged training department to spearhead a structured training approach with proper evaluation, monitoring and review procedures.

Better hiring policy

In addition to structured training, the company now has smarter hiring policies. A key issue it had contended with was staff turnover: each attendant would stay an average of three months.

This was hardly ideal from management’s viewpoint. Further analysis revealed that it wasn’t an issue of recruitment but of retention.

While the industry trend towards full automation means less reliance on manual labour, it also means
that the job scope of a car park attendant will change.

No more is it a simple man-at-the-entrance, pay-and-collect procedure. An attendant now needs to have the knowledge and skills to operate highly sophisticated equipment.

Said senior human resource manager Ms Linda Wong: “We now hire better qualified people, minimum upper-secondary qualifications, so that they can cope with the level of training. They stay longer because they realize that we really care about them.”

Welfare schemes

To further augment the employer-employee relationship, the company has welfare schemes such as birthday celebrations for all staff, as well as a paid day-off for birthdays.

“It’s early days yet, but we believe our investment will show in improved business performance,”
said Mr Lopez.

There is a huge market potential – only 27 per cent of all commercial buildings licensed to the Urban Redevelopment Authority are currently managed by external car park operators.

Metro Parking currently has a regional presence in Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, and it plans to expand into Thailand and Indonesia.

“The future will be service-focused. When we say service quality, we really mean it,” said Mr Lopez.

To better serve customers and continue providing a great parking experience to motorist, Metro Parking successfully launched a Service Excellence Programme in May 2005.

To date, Metro Parking has received 1 EXSA Star Award, 5 EXSA Gold Awards and 13 EXSA Silver Awards.

Based on international research and the best practices of world-class companies, the Service Excellence Programme will

• Review the entire customer service value chain
• Develop specific customer service blueprints that stipulate service excellence standards
• Train all staff including managers on the fundamentals of service excellence
• Transfer classroom learning into the workplace by providing systematic follow-up through structured on-the-job training conducted by immediate supervisors; and
• Establish a follow-up Service Excellence Monitoring System

Conducted over a period of 12 months, the Service Excellence Programme will provide the foundation for the company to scale new heights in customer service and enhance market differentiation. It will revisit the basics of serving customers. Emphasizing both hardware and heart-ware, the Programme will seek to strengthen the ‘Metro way’ of delighting customers in providing a great experience.

Service Excellence for Metro Parking is a marathon without a finishing line. It will challenge Metro Parking to do better than the best offered by the market and create the future for our company and our people.