By Victor A. Hill, MPA, CAPP

Videos can help educate customers about your services and editing software makes it easier than ever to produce simple, effective videos you can share on your website and through social media.

We created four videos to better explain our pay stations, smartphone app, and transition to license plate recognition. To date, our pay-by-phone piece has more than 17,000 views and is the most viewed video in our university’s history. It saw a massive spike in views this summer, which suggests that incoming freshmen might have checked it out or that you and others in the parking industry saw it and shared it.

Our pay station video is popular with university departments because it’s a 45-second way to show visitors the interface before they arrive to campus. Our 90-second license plate recognition video helped ease concerns with a simple reminder to customers that their plate is their permit. Residence Life produced a video about litter after seeing the ugly aftermath of move-outs and finals at the end of each semester. It was created by students and has a dramatic but hopeful message of common sense.

Don’t underestimate the power of videos to provide excellent service. These short stories take a few seconds to watch on your smartphone and simplify parking for your customers.

You can check out our videos here.

Victor Hill, MPA, CAPP, is the director of parking and transportation services for the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.