3 Reasons To Consider A Digital Tenant Engagement Platform For Your Office Building

Digital engagement platforms are accompanying the 21st century’s fascination with and meteoric adoption of co-working. Many offices are no longer dull boxes divided into cubicles. Companies encourage sociability and a full immersion into the surrounding office environment. Property owners and managers are now leveraging the benefits of community engagement with online tenant portals.

1. Digital engagement places a village in tenants’ hands

Tenant portals can be thought of as an exclusive LinkedIn for an office building but with a host of services, such as space reservation, online shopping and event calendars. Because of the draw of these convenient services, a tenant portal, once launched, typically engages 60% to 90% of an office building's population.

Landlords can engage with their entire building population, rather than just tenant reps.

One way a portal helps drive community engagement is through a newsfeed similar to a LinkedIn or Facebook timeline. On the newsfeed, members of the office community can easily connect with each other.

Writers from a media company can reach out to an accounting firm downstairs for help with tax returns. Software developers can seek out the design startup down the hall to signal boost their new dating app. A small company wanting to throw a big bash can send out event invites to the building calendar through the tenant portal.

“You can push out a post saying, ‘I need an accountant to help me with XYZ task,’ and have someone, somewhere in the building comment with a response in seconds,” Equiem CEO Gabrielle McMillan said. The company offers a digital tenant engagement platform. “With our platform, everyone in the building has access to the perks, events and sense of community you get from a co-working space.”

2. Occupant retention and fast return on investment

The portals in a digital engagement platform can easily connect occupants to all the local amenities around a building, like restaurants, retail, health and wellness, dry cleaners and newsstands.

"Our platform lets you create a workplace experience packed with valuable services that people never want to leave," Chiapoco said.

Tenants can also write in feedback from the app. This gives property managers access to a more complete, long-term database of client testimony. Combined with cloud-based reporting and analytics infrastructure, property owners can run reports and analyze their occupants' activity from mobile and smart devices in real time.

The information can be leveraged to further improve and customize the tenant experience. Building occupants end up more satisfied with their deeper community involvement, prompting lease renewals and the regular use of extant building resources.

Tenants want to stick around, improving the owner’s return on investment.

“The platform genuinely offers value," Chiapoco said. "Tenants sign up in droves and owners have access to data like never before that allows them to improve their tenant’s experience."

3. Increased communication between building managers and occupants

Digital platforms promote more face time, not less. Through the app, building managers can inform occupants of updates and emergencies. This way, important updates can be sent directly to individual occupants, rather than being relayed through a tenant rep.

Online portals are at their most effective when paired with committed on-site customer service staff.

Take Equiem’s community manager concept. Most of Equiem’s locations have their own community manager staff — dedicated marketing specialists who work directly under the property’s owners and managers. These experts monitor and assist residents 24/7, organize communitywide events and ultimately serve as an informed, professional liaison between the building’s occupants and managers.

Digital tenant engagement blends the futuristic efficiency of having an entire office building at the tap of a finger and the knowledge that someone on the other side is paying attention to tenant needs.

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