How Burleson Parks & Recreation Freed Up Staff With Self-Serve Software
Their team used self-serve registration to cut phone lines and give staff more time for real connection
July 7, 2026
5 min read
Every recreation software pitch promises efficiency. Jen, Parks & Rec Director for the City of Burleson, Texas, has heard them all. As a director responsible for a park system, a farm and arts center, golf courses, cemeteries, and a full recreation division, and as a parent who registers her own kids for the same kinds of programs she runs. She joined the Parks & Tech Collective show to talk through both sides of that experience, and what actually changed when her department moved to Amilia's SmartRec platform.
What parents actually want... According to a parent who runs Parks & Rec
Take off the director hat, and Jen's list of must-haves sounds a lot like anyone juggling a family calendar.
"I cannot stand going to someone's recreation software website and having to dig to register for a class," she said. What she wants instead: one login, one click, done, plus communication that doesn't add another app to the pile. "I don't want our recreation software as a parent to feel like another added task to the busy family routine".
"I don't want our recreation software as a parent to feel like another added task to the busy family routine".Jen, Parks & Rec Director for the City of Burleson, Texas
The hardest part of a software switch isn't the software
As a director, Jen is candid about where the real friction shows up: not in the system, but in the people using it. Getting a team comfortable with something new, whether it's registration software, a work-order system, or field-lining automation, means bringing them into the why early, not just handing them a new login.
The transition happened during COVID, and the numbers backed it up
Burleson's move to Amilia started right in the middle of the pandemic, with vendors unable to visit on-site and the whole go-live run virtually over video calls.
With Amilia SmartRec's self-serve tools for Parks and Recreation management, Burleson's team saw:
- Online self-serve sales grow from roughly 30% to 70-80% of transactions
- Faster onboarding for new front-desk hires, since they could look answers up in the system instead of memorizing everything
- Fewer "super users" needed to run the back end than before, despite handling more volume
Self-serve gave staff their phone lines, and their calm, back
The clearest change Jen described wasn't a metric. It was tone.
Before self-serve, Burleson's front desk fielded call after call for things people can now do themselves. Today, one staff position exists purely to check people in, no cash drawer, no back-end system access, because so much of that line has moved online.
"That automation allows me to alleviate that line quicker," Jen said. "My interaction with my staff who doesn't feel incredibly stressed out from the twenty-deep line... it's a totally different tone and energy."
Amilia SmartRec gives teams like Burleson's more time for the part of the job that doesn't show up in a report: the community interaction that hasn't disappeared, just moved to where it matters more, from the registration counter to the after-school pickup and the soccer practice itself.
