At HqO, we talk a lot about the importance of owning the relationship with your customers, but in the digital age, a tenant experience platform can take it a step further: establishing a relationship in the first place. While it’s important to be able to understand your building occupants and tenants through data, communication is also key — whether we’re experiencing a viral pandemic or not.
But especially in times of crisis, landlords are in a unique position to help people navigate the potential impact that an emergency or healthcare crisis, like COVID-19, could have on their work life and also help them plan for a much-needed and successful return to their building community when we make it through this time.
The most powerful tool available to landlords in these moments is consistent and proactive communication with tenants and their employees.That’s why today, we’re sharing three pertinent examples of how our customers are using the HqO tenant experience platform in their buildings to communicate more efficiently with the occupants who work in their buildings every day: emergency communications, push notifications, and building updates.
Integrating an Emergency Communication and Notification System
Coronavirus (COVID-19) isn’t the only reason for an emergency communication function, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have the feature available during a worldwide viral pandemic. Situations like these are fluid and change so quickly. Best practices and mandatory requirements around sanitation alone are rapidly changing as new specifications change and come out. Having this communication feature available to your community allows you to share every update as it happens, COVID-19 related or not.
Some practical uses we’ve seen recently:
- Posting updates from the CDC and BOMA in real time to the home screen of their app to keep tenants and occupants informed.
- Integrating with an emergency communication system provider. One example is LiveSafe, an HqO partner that gives members of a business or campus community the ability to surface actionable early warning insights that can help risk managers prevent an incident from occurring.
- Guidance on how landlords and property management teams are stepping up building sanitation, where occupants can find sanitation stations, and work-from-home tips.
Using Push Notifications
The easiest and most efficient way to engage your tenant community, a push notification sends a message directly to occupants’ home screens to share information, reminders, and more. When utilizing for emergency or crisis communication, the importance of the capability to instantly send a message to customers and occupants, so they know exactly what is happening and what is important, cannot be understated.
Some use cases we’ve seen:
- Reminding occupants about weekly trivia games
- Alerting tenant community to a tenant appreciation event, such as coffee for tenants in the morning, or a massage company visiting the amenity center.
- Receiving an early-morning notification letting you know building hours have been modified, which shapes your decision to work from home.
Communicating Building Updates with In-App Content
If communication during a routine day is important, it’s critical when something is happening outside the norm. Whether it’s access to a certain entryway, a facility or amenity update, or new policies or procedures, the people entering your building need to know what to expect on a daily basis.
Some use cases we’ve seen:
- Details on buildings opening and closing for holidays or safety concerns.
- Construction updates and alerts regarding entrance or sidewalk closures.
- Information about a specific elevator closing for repair.
In the event of an emergency like COVID-19, landlords and property teams also will be able to effectively prepare people to return to the building with important information, such as how suites have been sanitized and any new regulations.
Of course there are more ways to up your communication through the use of a tenant experience platform, but many of our customers have seen a big impact through an ability to communicate for emergencies, through push notifications, and to share building updates.
How HqO Is Helping During COVID-19
During this challenging time, HqO is working to support all landlords through the COVID-19 outbreak in three ways:
- First, we are offering a free, lightweight version of the HqO app to any landlord who would like to use it to communicate updates, building policies and procedures, cleaning schedules or other helpful information to tenants in real time.
- We are expanding our mobile application for tenants to include an “Out of Office” filled with content for employees to engage with. We’re aiming to keep people connected to their workplace and the building community.
- Finally, we are working on a “return to work” plan which we will make available market-wide at no-cost to help landlords prepare for the return to work and meet the new consumer expectations.
If you’re interested in learning more, or if there’s anything we can do to help, reach out to us at [email protected] or contact your HqO customer success representative.
