I Can't Stop Judging Your Office Lobby. Confessions of a Real Estate Customer Experience Nerd
I love visiting other people's offices.
Sure, I prefer in-person meetings anyway. But if I'm honest, part of the attraction is that every office visit gives me a chance to observe customer experience in the wild.
As someone who spends her days advising real estate organisations on customer experience, I can't help myself - I notice everything.
How easy was it to find the building? How easy was it to get in? What happens when something goes wrong? Does anyone notice?
This Friday, I'm reflecting on some of the best, worst and most memorable experiences I've had recently. If you're looking for some entertaining weekend reading - here goes:
The Sweaty: The Premium Building That's Somehow Hotter Than The Street Outside
This week I visited a really swanky office building on one of the hottest days of the year. I walked through the doors expecting blessed relief from the heat. Instead, the lobby was somehow hotter than the pavement outside.
Behind the reception desk was a concierge in a three-piece suit who looked like he was suffering way more than I was. I asked whether the air conditioning had broken. Maybe it was a sustainability initiative?
He wasn't sure.
The real estate cutomer experience fail: Friends, buildings get hot. Air conditioning breaks. Things go wrong. But it's a fail when nobody seems able to explain why.
The Awkward: Five Minutes Is A Long Time To Stand Alone In Reception
On another occasion I arrived at a building where I had been pre-registered. Or so I thought.
The receptionist couldn't find my name. I spelled it a few times and watched him search repeatedly, but nothing was coming up. What made it awkward wasn't the delay itself. While he was trying to figure it out, several other visitors arrived after me and he stopped serving me to help them. They were greeted warmly, checked in and shown to their seats in the nice lobby.
Meanwhile I was just standing there.
He didn't say, "Just bear with me", explain what was happening, or offer me a seat. Eventually he realised he'd simply misspelled my name and let me through.
The real estate cutomer experience fail: The mistake didn't bother me. It was the feeling of standing there wondering whether I had somehow become invisible.
The Vanishing Act: The Day The Free Drinks Disappeared
This one is going to sound ridiculous.
My workspace offers free soft drinks and beer from the communal fridge on Thursday and Friday afternoons. Yesterday I wandered over at lunchtime looking forward to grabbing one and the fridge was completely empty except for 3 Coronas. When I asked what had happened, I was told that some people last week took more than one drink, the budget had run out, and there simply weren't any left.
Now, do I desperately need a free can of Coke? Of course not.
But somewhere along the way those drinks have become part of how I talk about the space. I even mention it when showing candidates and visitors around. I think that's why it felt disappointing.
The real estate cutomer experience fail: It's not because of the drink itself, but because something that had become part of the experience had quietly disappeared.
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A really bad AI-generated photo of me looking for a drink -it doesn't even look like me, lol.
The Absurd: The Founder Who Discovered Their Office Didn't Actually Open Until 8:30
A founder friend told me about arriving at their workspace at 8am for a Teams call. Nothing unusual there. Most professionals start work somewhere between 8am and 9am. Many founders start earlier. Except this particular morning their access card didn't work.
After several failed attempts they tailgated someone else into the building and asked the management team what was going on. The answer was surprising.
The building's official opening hours were actually 8:30am until 5:30pm. The founder had been accessing the building outside those hours for almost a year. Apparently everyone's access card had been configured incorrectly, and no one had any idea. After all, who expects an office not to open until 8:30 in the morning?
If you've ever worked in a startup, you'll know why it feels slightly disconnected from reality. Founders don't always work nine-to-five. Some arrive early. Some stay late. Some leave for dinner and come back. Now they were being told that if they left the building after 5:30pm they wouldn't be able to get back in.
This founder is now looking for a new workspace.
The real estate cutomer experience fail: It's not just the policy itself - which does seem ludicrous. It was how the founder discovered it. Nobody had communicated a change. They found out because they were locked out.
The Seamless: The Tiny QR Code That Makes Me Unreasonably Happy
Fortunately, not all customer experience stories end badly. Some of the best examples I've seen recently remind me that great customer experience is often surprisingly simple. One thing that always makes me smile is receiving a QR code via email before arriving at a building. I know that's a slightly odd thing to get excited about.
I can walk straight through downstairs reception, scan the code and get on with my day - no searching for my name, awkward waiting or queues.
It doesn't work for every building, I know. And a QR code isn't a substitute for a friendly face for the many people who don't like the QR approach. But I love it.
The real estate cutomer experience win: It's not just the policy itself - which does seem ludicrous. It was how the founder discovered it. Nobody had communicated a change. They found out because they were locked out.
The Thoughtful: The Zebra Chocolates Nobody Needed (And Everyone Remembered)
One of my recent experiences which isn't really about real estate but about events and human engagement - and given events are a big part of our destination activation service line at RealService, I paid attention. I was at a Ladies in Real Estate event hosted recently by Investec. (Great to finally meet you Adina David )
By complete coincidence, I happened to turn up wearing my favorite zebra-print shoes.As it turns out, the zebra is their mascot.
The customer experience win came at the end of the event. As guests collected their jackets from the coat check, the events team were handing out zebra-themed gifts and zebra-branded Tony's Chocolonely bars. Entirely unnecessary, probably not hugely expensive, but the thing everyone was talking about on the way out.
The best customer experience moments are often like that: Not complicated or expensive, but about thoughtful and memorable engagement.
One of the biggest misconceptions in real estate is that customers leave because of one major failure, and sometimes they do.
More often it's an accumulation of little things - poor communication, ridiculous access times, no air conditioning building...
But the reverse is also true. People rarely fall in love with a building because of one grand gesture. More often it's an accumulation of small moments that signal somebody cared.
Do me a favour: Walk Through Your Building Like You've Never Been There Before
Here's my challenge to every real estate operator reading this. Walk through your building tomorrow as if you've never visited before.
Try to find your office on google
Arrive as a guest.
Check in at reception.
Ask for help.
Use the facilities.
Read a few of the emails you send visitors.
What do you notice? And more importantly, what have your customers already noticed?
At RealService , helping organisations answer that question is what we do every day.
Through customer insight surveys, customer journey mapping, mystery shopping, interviews, focus groups and benchmarking, we help operators see their buildings through fresh eyes and fix the things that are hiding in plain sight.
Because by the time customers start complaining, they've usually noticed dozens of things that you haven't.
For more insights like this, follow Chenai Gondo, PhD
