When Unity5’s Chief Operations Officer Rachel Evans, formed our Customer Success Team in April 2025, she set them a deceptively simple brief: make sure every client is getting the absolute most from their system. Not “answer tickets faster.” Not “upsell.” Just help our clients succeed.

Six months on, that small team of three have been named Parking Team of the Year at the IPC Awards 2026 – and the results behind that nomination show exactly why.

Filling the gap between support and account management

Most software support works one way: something breaks, you raise a ticket, you wait for an answer. It’s reactive by design. It waits for problems.

The Customer Success Team was built to work the other way round. Sitting in the space between reactive technical support and commercial account management, Dan Wyatt (Customer Success Manager), Luke Chynoweth (Customer Success Executive) and River Leisk (Customer Success Executive) go looking for value on our clients’ behalf – often spotting where a client is losing time or money before the client is even aware of it. Between them they cover Unity5’s full product range: Zatpark, MiPermit and Case Manager, across both private operators and local authorities.

 

 

Driving Value for Unity5 Customers

1. System Health Checks: The team proactively reviews how a client is really performing — running reports to pinpoint underperformance such as low PCN issuance, high cancellation rates or a high proportion of lost appeals. Then they fix it, whether that means reconfiguring the system or improving a client’s own processes. Each Health Check sets a clear baseline, targets high-impact quick wins, and hands ownership back to the client, better equipped than before.

2. System Adoption: Great software only creates value if people actually use it. When a new feature launches, the team makes sure every client knows about it, understands it, and sees how it helps — and they do the same for valuable older features clients may never have been shown. Delivered at scale through webinars, how-to videos and one-to-one training, it turns released functionality into adopted, value-generating functionality.

Crucially, the team measures success by the client’s independence, not its own ticket count. They run self-serve workshops so clients can manage their own configuration, and coach client teams until — in one client’s words, “we now have our whole team utilising the system much better.”

 

 

The proof: Westmorland and Furness Council

The clearest example of the model in action is a proactive six-week Health Check the team offered (not one the council requested) on their use of Case Manager. The results speak for themselves:

• Support burden all but eliminated – from 109 support tickets (around 10 hours of staff time) down to a single ticket since early June.
• Around 24 hours of staff time saved by moving correspondence to email (76% of items), roughly five minutes has been saved per letter, plus more time has been saved by automating previously manual reports.
• Direct cost savings on printed and posted correspondence, with more identified and available.
• A more capable client, not a more dependent one – the council now manages its own configuration in-house after a self-serve workshop.

The review also surfaced significant opportunities the council could now act on for the first time — including tens of thousands of pounds in charges being cancelled under unclear generic reasons, and spend on duplicate vehicle registrations. Sometimes the most valuable thing a Health Check does is show a client what they couldn’t previously see.

And because the model is repeatable, it’s now being rolled out across more of our client base — turning one-off wins into a scalable programme that drives efficiency, and in turn revenue, for the operators and councils we work with.

 

 

What our clients say

“This is great service and the best thing Zatpark has offered us in a long time. River is a real asset – he is simply fantastic, and his knowledge was exactly what we needed to improve the way we use the system.”
Emma Power, Park Direct UK

“Luke has demonstrated his wealth of system and technical knowledge throughout all of our meetings – if he says he will get something done, he does it. He is friendly, personable, helpful and professional, takes the time to listen, and goes above and beyond where he can.”
Maria Woolford, Notice Processing Team Leader, Cambridgeshire County Council

 

A tight team, delivering value

“Watching our Customer Success Manager and Customer Success Executives unite around a shared mission has been inspiring for me. As their Line Manager I’ve been pleased to see how they have built deep platform authority, and are delivering measurable value to our clients every single day. We have built an award-winning team and more importantly, we’ve established a core engine for our clients’ long-term success.”
Lauren Tucker, Head of Customer Experience, Unity5

 

Proactive by design

In under six months, across three platforms and both the private and public sectors, this team has changed what “support” means at Unity5 – from waiting for problems to actively helping clients succeed. The IPC finalist nomination is welcome recognition, but the real measure is the one the team cares about most: clients who get more from their systems, and can increasingly do it themselves.

Congratulations to Dan, Luke and River – award winners!

 

Want to know more about how our Customer Success Team could help to streamline your operations? Please chat with your Unity5 Account Manager.

Interested in how Unity5 software and 5-star customer service can boost your local authority or business? Click here to arrange a no obligation discovery call