The power of user experience for your coworking space

User experience – we’ve all heard people talk about it, but what is it and why should we care? In a nutshell, it’s the experience users, or more specifically for coworking spaces – coworking members – have when they interact with you online or in-person. Every aspect of your business impacts your user experience, from your space design to your mobile experience.

At Optix, we’ve seen first-hand what a powerful tool it can be for coworking businesses. Ultimately, it creates happy members and happy members bring several significant benefits. The first is member retention. Happy members don’t shop around. They’ve already found the best option. This reduces member churn, increases your marketing ROI and, most importantly, ensures you have a stable revenue stream.

Happy members are also more likely to recommend your space – in-person and online. This is called word-of-mouth or referral marketing and it is a very successful, cost-effective way to grow your community. Studies have shown that 84% of people most trust purchase referrals from friends, followed closely by consumer opinions online.

Your members and bottom line aren’t the only ones that benefit from exceptional user experience though. Your staff do too. This is because improving user experience often involves fixing issues in your space. A great by-product of this is that it boosts your operational efficiency, making your team’s lives easier.

Refining your coworking user experience

You don’t have to overhaul your whole service strategy to boost your user experience. You just need to understand the areas your members care about most and focus on amplifying those.

To help you identify these key user experience drivers, try asking yourself the following questions:

What motivated my members to look for a coworking space? The majority of your community could, for example, be experiencing loneliness and fatigue from working from home throughout the pandemic.

Why did they choose this space over others? Perhaps they picked you because you are located closest to their home and they wanted to ensure they had a convenient commute.

Why have they stayed? Once they joined, these members may have loved the connected community and speciality services you offer.

By answering these questions, you’ll have a clearer understanding of your unique value proposition. Then it’s simply a matter of finding ways to enhance it.

The power of user feedback

Who could tell you more about your user experience than users themselves? They know what makes your space great and what doesn’t. Take this opportunity to tap into that knowledge by asking your members for feedback. Just make sure you’re ready to act on the information you get. If you don’t, your community may feel you wasted their time.

A good tip for getting started is to be specific with your questions. This will help ensure you get strong feedback you can action. Here are some examples you could use:

What are we doing well? Getting members to share what they enjoy about your coworking space will help you validate or reassess the value proposition you just defined.

What frustrations do you have about working out of this coworking space? Giving members the chance to vent frustrations serves a double purpose. Not only will it clarify the pain points you need to address, it will also help them feel heard.

Are there services or amenities you wish we offered? Asking this question is a great way to gather inventive ideas you can use to boost your value proposition even further.

Don’t forget to thank your community for taking the time to share feedback. After all, they’re helping you improve your service strategy. A small gesture can work as an incentive too!

Categorize, prioritize and keep improving

As the feedback rolls in, you may feel overwhelmed by the input. Sorting and prioritizing responses will help. We recommend categorizing first by the area for improvement (space design, technology etc.) and then by the effort involved. This will help you identify low-hanging fruit you can address immediately and activities that will require longer-term investment. From there, all you have to do is create your user experience action plan and get to work.

The most important thing to remember though is that improving your user experience isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s a continuous improvement process you need to integrate into your overall service strategy. This is done by creating a feedback loop with activities like quarterly member surveys. The benefits of doing so are great. You’ll have a happier community, a better run space and a stable revenue stream that will only grow over time.

Interested in boosting your coworking user experience?

Optix is a platform for coworking and flexible offices that puts users at the centre of its experience. Book a demo to speak with someone from our team to learn more!