Disappointed at seeing his side lose ground on the Championship leaders, Pards will be searching for more consistency from his Hammers going into a hectic run of games.
"We need to hit back with a good result against Forest now," he said, "and that will mean a lot of hard work this week. There is a problem with our consistency at the moment. We are producing excellent performances one game and then letting ourselves down in the next.
"That is not good enough for West Ham United and it's something we have to address. This is a busy time of the season and we need to start performing to a solid level week in week out, otherwise we will concede too much ground on the leaders.
"I'll be looking for a good response from the players over the Christmas and New Year period and hopefully they will show their quality."
Reflecting on dropping to sixth place in the Championship table, Pards also confessed that his team are letting themselves down when they get into striking distance of the promotion places.
"Every time we pull close to the leaders we seem to trip up," he mused. "We've lost at places where we shouldn't have lost this season and with no disrespect to Preston, who played very well, we should not have lost at Deepdale.
"There's no point moaning about the referee or our hard luck, either. We can only point the finger of blame at ourselves and then use that as the impetus to try and turn things around."
Of the game itself, Pards admitted that a less than impressive first-half performance cost his side the game.
"We were disappointed with the inconsistency we showed in the first-half," he admitted, "and away from home you are going to get punished for that. In the second-half we showed what we are about in terms of spirit, skill and character, but we left ourselves with too much to do.
"If we had started the game in the same way that we ended it then we could easily have come away with three points. But as it stands we started the game badly and have come away with nothing."
A positive point of the game was the performance of midfielder Nigel Reo-Coker, who came off the bench to drive his team forward, and score his second goal of the season. Alan was also pleased with what the England Under-21 player brought to the Hammers in the second-half.
"Nigel did well when he came on," said Pards, "and his goal gave us a springboard to go out and push for an equaliser. We created the chances in the second-half, but just couldn't find a way through.
"Unfortunately I had to bring Luke Chadwick off at half-time because Preston's midfield was a lot narrower than ours and it was causing us problems. We looked more compact in the second-half and were definitely more of a threat."
Now nine points off Christmas leaders Wigan, the importance of bouncing back quickly is not lost on Pards.
"We need to get the Preston game out of our system," he confessed, "and start to play the consistently good football that I know we are capable of doing.
"We have had poor results before and bounced back very well. Now we'll need to show similar character and determination, starting with Nottingham Forest on Boxing Day."