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Industry:
Logistics
Founded:
2018
HQ:
San Francisco, California
Previous provider:
Google Voice
When AirGarage founders Jonathon Barkl, Scott Fitsimones, and Chelsea Border got sick of paying high prices to park near campus at their university, they came up with a creative solution: pay the owners of nearby houses to use their empty driveways during the day. That led to the creation of a successful network of driveway owners renting spots to fellow college students.
They soon realized that the big opportunity wasn’t in driveways that can fit a couple cars, but in parking lots that can fit dozens. AirGarage is an end-to-end parking lot management platform that provides marketing, collects payments, handles customer service, and enforces legal parking for garages and lots across the U.S.
OpenPhone integrations used:
The challenge
When AirGarage launched, the founders handled all customer support through a single Google Voice phone number. This worked well until it didn’t. With Google Voice, the AirGarage team struggled to share the support load. They also had no way to assess the importance of each incoming call.
"When it was just one Google Voice number, it’s not very good for sharing. And if you pick up calls from just one phone number, it could be anybody — it could be a parking lot owner or it could be a driver," says AirGarage CEO Jonathon Barkl. "So then you have to pick up every phone call to that line because it could be the most important phone call you get all day."
As the volume of calls coming increased, it was glaringly apparent that AirGarage needed a business phone solution that could grow with them.
Jonathon Barkl
CEO at AirGarage
The solution
Fortunately for AirGarage, Jonathan found OpenPhone as soon as he did.
With OpenPhone Jonathon and his team could have dedicated phone numbers they could share to provide support for parking lot owners, drivers, and their network of contract enforcement workers. Knowing who was calling would certainly make life easier for them.
Even more enticing was OpenPhone’s signature benefit — a centralized location for their communications.
"Our communications with customers became siloed," says Jonathon. "Each person on the team had their own phone number on their own separate phones. Nobody could see who was talking to lot owners and what the history of the conversation was."
The impact
AirGarage has managed to grow tremendously across the United States and OpenPhone has been with them every step of the way.
"The shared communications history in OpenPhone is just so valuable," says Jonathon. "Everything we do as a company in terms of lot owner support, driver support, enforcement support, all of that is a shared history so that any one person can step in immediately and take over a function, a task, or a relationship and understand what’s happened in that relationship and be able to pick it up without causing any hiccups."
Jonathon also takes advantage of the OpenPhone Zapier integration to automate the hiring and onboarding of new contractors joining their network of contract enforcement workers. “This saves me so much time doing it that way because I’m usually onboarding in batches of 50 to 100," says Jonathon.
When AirGarage founders Jonathon Barkl, Scott Fitsimones, and Chelsea Border got sick of paying high prices to park near campus at their university, they came up with a creative solution: pay the owners of nearby houses to use their empty driveways during the day. That led to the creation of a successful network of driveway owners renting spots to fellow college students.
They soon realized that the big opportunity wasn’t in driveways that can fit a couple cars, but in parking lots that can fit dozens. AirGarage is an end-to-end parking lot management platform that provides marketing, collects payments, handles customer service, and enforces legal parking for garages and lots across the U.S.
"The shared communications history in OpenPhone is just so valuable."
Jonathon Barkl
When AirGarage launched, the founders handled all customer support through a single Google Voice phone number. This worked well until it didn’t. With Google Voice, the AirGarage team struggled to share the support load. They also had no way to assess the importance of each incoming call.
"When it was just one Google Voice number, it’s not very good for sharing. And if you pick up calls from just one phone number, it could be anybody — it could be a parking lot owner or it could be a driver," says AirGarage CEO Jonathon Barkl. "So then you have to pick up every phone call to that line because it could be the most important phone call you get all day."
As the volume of calls coming increased, it was glaringly apparent that AirGarage needed a business phone solution that could grow with them.
Jonathon Barkl
With Google Voice, the AirGarage team struggled to share the support load. They also had no way to assess the importance of each incoming call.
"When it was just one Google Voice number, it’s not very good for sharing. And if you pick up calls from just one phone number, it could be anybody — it could be a parking lot owner or it could be a driver," says Jonathon. "So then you have to pick up every phone call to that line because it could be the most important phone call you get all day."
Their call volume also became too high for one person to be able to handle calls from multiple groups of customers and partners, including drivers parking in AirGarage-managed lots, lot owners, and enforcement operators. Expansion also meant AirGarage began dedicating resources to sales.
"Our communications with customers became siloed," says Jonathon. "Each person on the team had their own phone number on their own separate phones. Nobody could see who was talking to lot owners and what the history of the conversation was."
Their existing phone system setup also made it hard to properly route calls to the right teammate and made onboarding new contractors tedious, as Jonathon had to manually send welcome messages to everyone they hired.
Fortunately for AirGarage, Jonathan found OpenPhone as soon as he did.
With OpenPhone Jonathon and his team could have dedicated phone numbers they could share to provide support for parking lot owners, drivers, and their network of contract enforcement workers. Knowing who was calling would certainly make life easier for them.
Even more enticing was OpenPhone’s signature benefit — a centralized location for their communications.
"Our communications with customers became siloed," says Jonathon. "Each person on the team had their own phone number on their own separate phones. Nobody could see who was talking to lot owners and what the history of the conversation was."
AirGarage has managed to grow tremendously across the United States and OpenPhone has been with them every step of the way.
"The shared communications history in OpenPhone is just so valuable," says Jonathon. "Everything we do as a company in terms of lot owner support, driver support, enforcement support, all of that is a shared history so that any one person can step in immediately and take over a function, a task, or a relationship and understand what’s happened in that relationship and be able to pick it up without causing any hiccups."
Jonathon also takes advantage of the OpenPhone Zapier integration to automate the hiring and onboarding of new contractors joining their network of contract enforcement workers. “This saves me so much time doing it that way because I’m usually onboarding in batches of 50 to 100," says Jonathon.
Join thousands of businesses already using OpenPhone to communicate better with their customers.
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OpenPhone was issued a successful SOC 2 report and is actively monitored by Vanta.
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