Parcels at Concourse

Eliminating Package Pileups for a Unique Urban Community

Parcel Pending Smart Lockers Deliver a Special Experience to Parcels at Concourse

Introduction

Parcels at Concourse is an upscale urban apartment community, conveniently located inside the Crosstown Concourse –providing a unique living experience for residents.

Crosstown Concourse, an architectural rehabilitation of an old Sears distribution center, is “a vertical urban village” built around arts, education, and healthcare. This 1.2 million-square-foot re-development marvel allows residents, businesses, community members, and visitors alike to live, work, dine, shop, go to school, and experience the arts in the heart of downtown Memphis.

The centralized location has extensive perks, including access to all the Crosstown offerings (like shops and restaurants) and plush amenities like a dog park and a community garden. But, as with many multifamily communities across the country, the property was facing a growing problem: a significant and overwhelming influx of resident package deliveries.

While the property had upgraded from receiving, sorting, and storing packages in the leasing office, they found their new system too time-consuming for both staff and residents. The package cage they installed outside the leasing office still required at least two sorting sessions per day –sometimes more if residents wanted to pick up between sortings–a significant amount of time and effort for the property’s staff. The results were costly both in terms of diminished resident experience and the extra staff necessary to handle packages.

Felecia Gargus, Senior Property Manager for Parcels at Concourse, knew the community and its residents needed a better solution –and that’s when she found Parcel Pending.

The Problem

Parcels at Concourse received an average of 75-100 packages per day and more than 100 per day during the holiday season. This left property staff struggling to balance important leasing tasks with package management.

“Residents would get upset if they went to claim a package and the cage wasn’t sorted yet,” Gargus says. In an effort to provide the best service possible, leasing staff would sort the packages for residents on request, in addition to two scheduled sorting sessions in the morning and evening.

With residents often retrieving packages well beyond the designated 72-hour pickup window, property staff struggled to manage new deliveries that on average consumed 18 hours per week to manage, plus having to ensure residents claimed the days-old ones. They even brought on a part-time associate to help manage the increasingly time-consuming role of package management.

The Solution

Parcel Pending partnered with the team at Parcels at Concourse to design and implement a package management solution that fit all of the property’s needs, including a custom wrap for the lockers to highlight the property’s unique history and fit in with the artistic aesthetic of the surrounding offerings.

In addition to their new locker system, the property continues to use their old package cage to secure oversized deliveries. Our engineering team worked with the Parcels at Concourse team to develop a workflow which prompts residents using the locker kiosk touchscreen to check the cage for oversize packages. Residents can then use a key fob to securely access the cage without asking for assistance from property staff.

Parcels at Concourse also hosts families seeking treatment at the nearby St. Jude Children’s Hospital through a corporate housing program. Parcel Pending provided the property with a dedicated Customer Success Manager to manage move-ins and move-outs, allowing families staying at the property to use our service without violating HIPAA regulations.

The Results

Residents love having self-service, contact-free package pickup on-site. While the property charges a small monthly fee to use the lockers, residents are more than willing to pay for security and 24/7 access to their packages. And now, many of them retrieve their packages within a few hours of delivery, a huge improvement from the previous 72-hour pickup period.

The Parcel Pending solution has generated significant time and cost savings for Parcels at Concourse leasing staff – so much so that they are not backfilling for their part-time associate. The property saved over 12 hours per week for the part-time associate, plus at least 6 hours per week for the full-time leasing staff. “[With the lockers], I don’t have to get up from my desk and leave the office every ten minutes to process packages,” Gargus says. “I can actually get work done.”

In addition, the property is a participant in the Parcel Pending Subscription Program. In this program, the cost of the lockers is offset by monthly resident fees charged to residents using the system.

When asked if the investment in Parcel Pending was worthwhile, Gargus responded, “100% – I do. I would absolutely recommend them to anyone who asks.”

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Parcel Pending by Quadient is the leading provider of package management solutions for residential, commercial, retail, and university properties in the United States and Canada. With over 4 million packages successfully delivered monthly, we offer a wide range of solutions that ensure the simple and secure delivery and retrieval of packages and online orders.

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