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Summary
Heidi Barber and James Paden took the PIE 2026 stage with data from 600 consumers and 13 million real parking interactions to answer a question the industry keeps dancing around: what do customers actually want when something goes wrong? The answer has big implications for how operators think about AI, automation and the role of human support.
Table of Contents
Ask a room full of people if they’ve ever yelled “representative” at a phone menu, and nearly every hand goes up.
That’s exactly how Heidi Barber and James Paden opened their session at PIE 2026, and the room immediately connected with it. The humor worked because the experience was familiar. Beneath the laughs was a message operators needed to hear: when parking technology breaks down and support is nowhere to be found, customers carry the frustration with them.
Heidi Barber, VP of Marketing, and James Paden, Chief Product Officer, brought two original consumer studies to the session, a 2025 survey of 300 parking customers measuring real-world frustration and friction, and a brand-new 2026 survey of another 300 consumers focused specifically on AI perception in customer service, plus insights drawn from over 13 million live parking support calls.
The point they made was clear: automation and human support aren’t in competition. Deployed well, they work together, and knowing the difference is what separates good operators from great ones.
The Data Is More Damning Than Most Operators Expect
Parker Technology’s 2025 Consumer Data Report surveyed 300 parking customers across the U.S. and Canada, and the findings are clear.
- 82% of consumers report feeling frustrated when parking
- 52% say they frequently encounter problems
- 93% have had issues with pricing or payment
- And 62% (nearly two out of three) have avoided returning to a parking facility after just one bad experience.
Let that last one sink in. One bad interaction. Gone.
Heidi Barber framed it simply: every interaction is either a chance to earn loyalty or lose it for good. The trouble is, most operators aren’t measuring the interactions that go wrong, only the ones that run smoothly.
More Automation Creates More Moments That Require Human Help
One of the session’s biggest insights was what James Paden called the Human-Technology Mismatch Curve.
- More automation (LPR, contactless, pay-by-plate) takes over routine tasks.
- More automation creates more confusion: as an example, only 1 in 6 consumers feel “very comfortable” with LPR, and 10–15% have experienced misreads or access failures.
- More confusion creates more need for help, and those customers don’t just shrug and walk away. They want a human.
It’s a pattern we see in our own call data, and it aligns with what Indiana University shared as a client: “I don’t think people understand the difference…seeing somebody there, with human-to-human contact. Trying to help you out, keep you calmed down.”
The irony is real: the smarter your tech gets, the more your customers may need a person on the other end of the call.
When Things Go Wrong, People Want Speed and a Real Voice
When something breaks down in the parking experience, customers aren’t looking for a chatbot or a FAQ link. They want three things.
Reassurance. Clarity. Speed.
According to the consumer data:
- 50% prefer speaking with a live human via phone or video when something goes wrong
- Another 25% want to wait for an in-person attendant
- And among those who will use digital tools, 3 in 4 only want them if they connect to a real human at the end.
The speed expectations are equally unforgiving:
- 58% expect calls answered in under 20 seconds
- 75% expect full resolution in under 2 minutes
This is where tech-only solutions fall apart. No IVR, hold music or automated response can deliver the reassurance a frustrated driver needs when they’re stuck at a gate at 10 p.m.
AI Has a Lane, and It’s Not the Whole Road
This isn’t skepticism for its own sake. James Paden is the one building our AI products, and his read on where the technology actually works is grounded in real deployment data: AI is genuinely useful in parking, but only when it’s deployed where it actually works.
Our 2026 AI perception study surveyed 300 consumers on their comfort with AI in customer service. The main takeaway: about 70% are open to AI for routine tasks, but 67% trust humans most when something actually goes wrong.
Where AI earns its place:
- Answering questions about hours, rates, and directions
- Confirming payment status
- Routing and triaging incoming calls efficiently
- Handling high-volume, low-complexity interactions at off-peak hours
Where AI falls short:
- Troubleshooting real-time equipment failures
- Managing emotional or frustrated customers
- Navigating edge cases that require context and judgment
- Knowing when to escalate, and actually doing it
As James put it: AI-first without a human fallback doesn’t cut costs. It creates frustrated customers.
What Great Operators Will Do Differently
The session closed with a practical framework for what best-in-class support actually looks like.
The benchmarks are clear: customers will tolerate about a 10-second wait before frustration starts climbing. They expect full resolution, not just a response, in under 2 minutes. And while only about 3% of transactions trigger a help interaction, those 3% are the ones that define how a customer remembers the entire experience.
The operators who get this right will use AI for speed and scale (routing calls, handling payments, surfacing patterns) while keeping humans available for trust and resolution. Speed and empathy, working in tandem.
Effective support also requires something most operators haven’t fully built yet: visibility into why help calls happen, not just that they happened. The ability to act in the moment: open a gate, process a payment, push a rate. Context at the time of the call. And procedures that stay current.
The Real Question Isn’t “How Do We Automate More?”
Heidi Barber and James Paden ended on a slide that said it clearly:
“The question isn’t: ‘How do we automate more?’ The real question is: ‘How do we support better?'”
That reframe matters. Automation isn’t the goal. A better customer experience is the goal. Automation is one tool toward it, and so is a skilled, empowered human on the other end of that intercom.
If you missed the session or want to dig deeper into the data, our full AI perception report is available to download. And if you want to talk about what this looks like in practice for your operation, we’re always up for that conversation.
Heidi Barber
VP of Marketing
Heidi Barker has 10+ years of marketing and sales experience, with a penchant for digital strategy, content creation and process development. She holds a B.S. in Marketing & International Business from Butler University.