Westminster Council has introduced ‘pay by phone’ parking across its borough that it hopes will save over £6million per annum. The Council has developed the system with Verrus technology and contact centre support from Converso who are jointly responsible for handling up to 80,000 transactions per week.

Alastair Gilchrist, Director of Parking at Westminster, commented on the system: “We were looking for a convenient method of payment for the general public that would not only eradicate the high level of crime and would also give us vital statistics on the usage of particular parking areas. The pay by phone service is a perfect example of how you can use a balanced mix of technology and human interaction to provide a convenient, fast, popular and extremely cost-effective method for high volume, small value payments. We felt that the whole process could not be completely automated because people still want the comfort and re-assurance of speaking to a live person for their first interaction. By using the blend of technology from Verrus with the customer service skills of Converso is the perfect solution to introducing a service that is being readily adopted by the general public.”