The One Reason Why Your Tenants Prefer WeWork Over Traditional CRE

Posted By Katie Sullivan | Jun 6, 2018 6:00 PM

Commercial landlords: if you’re not afraid of WeWork stealing your tenants, you should at least be afraid of the precedent they’ve set for all other tenant experiences.

You see, tenants don’t love coworking spaces like WeWork just because they blast hip hop music, or offer cold brew coffee on tap – your tenants love WeWork because it makes them feel like they are part of a community and experience tailored specifically to them.

Personalization of the user experience is a huge driver of WeWork’s immediate and ongoing success. They came out of the gates with an innate capacity to cater to the modern worker – the worker who is always using their phone and programmed to expect the consumerization of products & services, who expects premium amenities, and who is used to being a part of digital and real world communities. We refer to these modern workers – often millennials – as the Connected Tenant, and they are getting very used to experiencing high-touch concierge-style service in many aspects of their lives.

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WeWork has changed the game in even the smallest of ways, including the fact that they don’t refer to their tenants as tenants at all. Instead, WeWork tenants are referred to as Members, changing the dynamic and giving the power back to the space dwellers (more on why this is important here).

WeWork is one of the great examples of companies who are not necessarily a tech company, but consider themselves and operate as one. In an age when every company can be called a tech company, it comes down to the principals and strategies put in place that will set them apart from a user experience perspective.

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Still not convinced that WeWork is a master at driving customer happiness? Here’s more proof:

This is a quick look at the type of metrics that WeWork measures, tracks, and iterates against to ensure the experience is always improving for members. If the experience is always improving and always personalized to the member, WeWork will always be successful and growing.

WeWork’s UX team is led by Tomer Sharon, a former senior UX researcher at Google, and before he officially started at WeWork, he pretended to be a member in six WeWorks in New York City and San Francisco. His team has grown exponentially since then and they are laser focused on critical user journeys during pre-membership, onboarding, membership, and growth and exit. These journey teams are wholly invested in learning, understanding, and improving the Member experience and they map just about every touch point, as seen below.

So, while you might not be too scared that WeWork will become your biggest competitor, you can’t possibly ignore the new reality they’ve presented to traditional CRE. So how can you make your property competitive to the WeWork member experience?

It’s not rocket science, but you need to build your strategy today. This ebook will hold your hand through the process – learn more about the stats you can’t ignore, what it means for landlords, and tactical steps to up your amenity, community, and concierge game – from a tech-enabled perspective.

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