When thinking about a typical commercial real estate tenant, many overlook the small details of their day. From their morning commute, to their favorite coffee, to even post-work activities such as doctor’s appointments or fitness classes, tenant activities are more ingrained in your building community than you may think. Even actions outside of your building are all part of what makes a good tenant experience, which we commonly refer to as “TeX.”
Cultivating this ecosystem is critical. Each tenant activity presents a new opportunity to improve the property experience with technology tailored to the individuals who are in the building every day. These opportunities harness the power of tenant experience: helping landlords put relevant technology into the hands of a building’s population that they don’t regularly connect with, and using that technology to improve tenant retention and attraction, as well as to generate value to their assets.
How a Tenant Engagement Platform Sets You Up for Success
We recently sat down with several of HqO’s subject matter experts, as well as surveyed nearly 300 HqO tenants, to determine what’s been on their minds as they prepare to tackle the new year. One of the major recurring themes was the prospect of creating engaging, communicative workplaces that keep people excited to come into the office.
At the end of the day, the signs of a good tenant experience involve the adoption of a customer-centric approach through the use of proptech. Alongside the rise of tenant experience came the rise of new office technologies to make sure that buildings are safer, more efficient, and more engaging than ever before. Tenant experience platforms — such as HqO’s end-to-end operating system — can provide property teams with the proper tools to aggregate and streamline all of a building’s technology systems into a single, powerful command center. Now, let’s talk about the specific things that such a tenant engagement platform can do.
Proptech Fuels Signs of a Good Tenant Experience
The HqO platform, alongside our best-in-class technology partners, can bring a sense of workplace culture to tenants that are actively seeking more engagement and community. The most recent market data lets us know that tenant sentiment is a driving factor behind modern workplace objectives, revealing that tenants are seeking more connection and engagement opportunities with their workplace culture and office buildings.
To keep property teams communicative about important building information, and to reach as many tenants as possible, landlords will need to do away with antiquated commercial real estate (CRE) business models. Instead of relying on a tenant point of contact, having the power to disseminate information to groups of people directly will establish trust, reduce time spent, and keep everyone informed with real-time updates. Such features on a property management app or platform may include a content section for updates, a community forum, chat and support systems, and even push notifications for important, time-dependent messaging.
Additionally, teams will need to bring amenities directly to their building occupants as we enter a new era of digital transformation for CRE, as well as to collect data on how people are actually using their buildings. Digital programming opportunities — such as fitness classes, discounts to on-site retailers, and more — can connect people to one another while also enhancing overall workplace culture, no matter where employees are located. Another helpful feature of a tenant engagement platform is its administration portal that can gather analytics on a building’s physical and digital amenities, alongside important benchmarking information to determine property performance, grade investments, and guarantee customer satisfaction.
What Comes Next?
With people already returning back to office buildings, there is no better time than now to start testing and reforming your digital building strategies. Current-day low occupancy rates mean that there is low risk to testing out new technology and setting your portfolio up for future success.
Property teams will be able to leverage these technologies to proactively set up their building experience for their tenants well into the future. As a major proponent to landlord best practices, having everything managed through a tenant engagement app is an easy, modern way that will differentiate one’s portfolio while also attracting newer, younger talent.
From driveway to desk, enabling tenants to track and plan their morning commutes, order ahead for breakfast and lunch, engage with touchless building experiences, and participate in events and digital programming directly through their mobile devices takes all of the guesswork out of a tenant’s day, and truly customizes their overall building experience into one that is frictionless and exciting.
When it comes to the rules of good engagement for a successful tenant experience, transparency and communication are key: you never want your tenants to feel disconnected from your office, even when they’re not in the building itself.
For more information about how a tenant experience platform can enhance your overall tenant experience, download a free demo today.
