A customer experience benchmark for flexible workspace and co-working
Topics covered: Tenant Experience, Real Estate Customer Experience, Flexible workspace, Customer experience, Coworking customer insight, Flexible office customer satisfaction, Flexible office customer service, Real estate customer experience strategy, Customer experience benchmarking in real estate, Flex workspace operations and service standards, Tenant experience measurement, Real Estate Net Promoter Score (NPS), Leading indicators in real estate performance, Customer insight surveys for landlords and operators, Workspace community management, Real estate asset management strategy, PropTech and CX measurement tools, Customer retention in flexible workspace, Experience management in commercial real estate, Flexible Office Community engagement, Real Estate Benchmark, Real Estate Data
Last week I was at a SPACE+ event for flex and coworking operators, and at several points in the day we got to talking about customer experience.
At one point I mentioned that I’ve never once been asked for feedback by the flex provider whose space I actually use. Not once have they sent me a structured survey, or interview request, or even left a tablet in the hallway with a smiley face or sad face on it.
You could feel the discomfort in the room, because all operators there said they do run some form of customer insight programme.
But, like hearing about a fellow fallen comrade, there was sympathy. Because running a flex space is hard. And this is exactly the kind of thing that's really important but that a well-meaning team can fall behind on when they’re juggling everything else.
There are things I would love to tell my office operator - if only they would ask.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the people who work on the ground in my office - they really are awesome. They know me by name, indulge me by looking at photos of my kid, and let me book meeting rooms in a last minute panic when I put my head round the door and ask if it's free while dialling into a Teams meeting.
But there are things I'd love to tell my operator that - quite frankly - are outside the nice guy at the front desk's control.
Like… can we have a snack vending machine? How about dynamic pricing for our meeting rooms? There's a weird limit on the digital access key, and that bugs me. And my biggest one - what's up with the phone service and guest Wi-Fi? It can sometimes be dodgy.
But no one has ever asked. Le sigh.
Customer insight is probably the strongest leading indicator flex operators have.
In an industry where customers can leave in 30 days, understanding sentiment early isn’t a nice-to-have -it’s survival.
And the operators who understand their customers best will outperform the ones who just assume they know. Customer sentiment today is revenue tomorrow.
Not all surveys are insight though. A lot of what passes for insight today isn’t really insight - a few shallow tick-box surveys or occasional NPS scores. Operators sometimes get anonymous ratings with no context, which is essentially data with no action behind it
By the time someone gives you a bad NPS score, you're already late. Especially if you don’t know who said it, why they said or or why you can't follow up. You can't fix the root cause.
That’s not insight, but a post-mortem.
But how do you actually know if your customer experience is good?
Another theme that came up repeatedly was measurement - because everyone measures CX and claims that they deliver a "great experience", but very few can clearly answer: What does great actually mean? How do you measure it properly? How do you prove it commercially?
What became very clear in that room is that flex now needs the same thing. A real benchmark for what “good” actually looks like.
Our network Experience Makers has launched a project to create the first customer experience benchmark specifically for flexible workspace operators.
We’re bringing together a small group of flex leaders in London this July who want to help shape what best practice looks like for the sector. This working group is a way to help the industry mature around something that is becoming commercially critical.
If you're a flex operator and want to be part of that conversation, drop me a note.
To find out more about Experience Makers: https://www.experiencemakers.com/
To read more about RealService and our proprietary benchmark for real estate customer experience: https://www.real-service.com/benchmarking
For more insights like this, follow me Chenai Gondo, PhD
