Merchants value their customers for obvious reasons. Without the customer, there is no business. Merchants should also consider the fact that their parking lots could be one of the most unsafe places for their customers to be. Merchants can also boost business by ensuring that customers are safe, both inside and outside the building.
Here is how merchants can keep their customers safe in the parking lot:
Cameras- Placing a few cameras around the parking lot will not only make the customer feel safer, it also helps deter the problem of car break-ins. Cameras can easily catch anything that happens in the parking lot and prove who did it. If the cameras are well-known to exist at your business, thieves and other criminals will avoid coming onto the property at all.
Security Guards- If your business is large enough, you might want to consider adding a security guard or two to keep an eye on the property both inside and out. A security guard can help catch a thief more quickly than looking back on a camera. A security guard will be able to nab and retain any possible criminals that might enter the property until police arrive on the scene. If a customer feels that they don’t want to walk into the parking lot alone for some reason, the security guard can walk the customer to the car making the customer feel much safer.
Lighting- Basic parking lot safety means to have proper lighting outside at night time. It is important that you business have enough lighting to make your customers feel safe and deter criminals from any activity there. If the parking lot isn’t well lit at night, there is a good chance that you won’t have many customers inside your store. They will be too worried about walking in a dark parking lot to visit your store in the evening hours.
Hidden Areas- Keep shrubbery, small or large walls or any other object that might obstruct the view enough for someone to hide behind or to have an attack advantage, out of the parking lot. When there is nothing obstructing the view of anyone in the store, it is less likely that your customers will be the victim of an attack in your parking lot. Those obstructions might look nice, but they do nothing in the way of the safety issue.
Keeping your customers safe in the parking lot of your business helps the customer, boosts your business and simply makes you feel better about what your business does for the safety of others. Safety should always come first. Remember that when you do things to keep your customers safe in the parking lot, you also keep your employees safe which is a very good bonus in the deal.
