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Image for blog post Booking meeting rooms at coworking spaces

Booking meeting rooms at coworking spaces

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The ability to book a private meeting room on demand is a critical component in any coworking space. Ensuring that members can do this quickly, easily, and when they need it is as important as having the rooms at all. 

For too long at Cowork Tahoe, we used paper sign-up sheets outside our meeting rooms for our members to reserve them. Yes, paper. It worked well enough, a member could walk up to the room they wanted and block out a time slot for a meeting later in the day, or even for right then if it wasn’t already being used. That is, if they remembered to have a pen in their hand.

However, it would cause problems when we inevitably forgot to post the new sheets up on time each week or if someone needed to book a room before they came into the office. It was a terrible member experience and our team spent far too much time helping members make reservations, printing out new sheets, and handling squatters

Sure, there are lots of technology solutions available to digitize room bookings, and we even tried one or two. We’ve since learned that technology isn’t automatically a better solution than an analog approach. 

For example, having an online calendar that members can book doesn’t help someone running late if they have to go to their desktop or laptop first, log in, find a room, book the room, then go to the room. 

Having tablets mounted outside each room with the ability to sign up can be powerful if they sync well with personal calendars, but are no better than paper and pencil if they don’t. And if the calendars they sync with still requires logging in through a website, you may as well not have the technology solution at all.

The ability to book a room with a few taps on a mobile phone has worked wonders at Cowork Tahoe. With our Jellyswitch app, members book their meeting rooms for the day or for the week while they are drinking coffee in the morning, or while they are walking up to the building. They book what they need when they need it & when they think of it. Not when they can get back to their desks. 

My members get what they need without having to ask me. When they talk to me or someone else on my team, it can be about more than something they can’t get quickly on their own.  We talk about their day, about their children, how their work in going. The conversations can be about human relationships rather than transactions because the transactions are easy to take care of on their own. That is meaningful. 

That level of convenience and flexibility contributes to a much better experience. It means that the coworking space is supporting, not hindering their productivity. It is one more way to add value to their membership by removing a small friction. 

It is also one more way for them to actively engage with our Cowork Tahoe brand. The frequency of engagement is multiple times a day. That builds brand recognition, trust, and through that, customer loyalty. 

If coworking is about one thing, its flexibility. That applies to how meeting rooms are used as much as anything else. A mobile first approach is the best way to achieve the level of flexibility needed to provide a seamless meeting room experience.   

Image for blog post Self service coworking doesn't exist

Self-service coworking doesn’t exist.

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These things don’t run themselves.

  • Coworking spaces are high touch businesses, so cannot be expected to run without a high level of attention to the customer experience.
  • Technology does not exist to replace human involvement, it exists to support it and better leverage how time is spent on human involvement.
  • To create a premier customer experience, great technology & personal interactions are both required.

About a year ago, I had a number of conversations with a building owner as they were preparing to open a new coworking space.

Many of the discussions centered on basics like what furniture to buy, what memberships to offer, and what brand of coffee maker to get.

But the rest were tough – this owner wanted to be completely disconnected from the space. He wanted the place to run itself and was assuming that electronic door access and independent members would make that happen. He had a true “build it and they will come” attitude, with no intention of investing in actually running the space. Nice ergonomic desk chairs, yes. Human time? No.

One year later and I happen to have connected with several of the people in his community that I’d spoken to because they had wanted a new coworking space. None of them work there. They all tried it out and quickly left. Why? The place feels dead, there is no sense of place, no experience, nothing to keep them there. They did not feel valued as customers.

The input they gave about what they needed to be productive was ignored.

I have seen this so many times – a building owner that wants to monetize their space hears about coworking & thinks its an easy way to drop their vacancy rate. That 1200 sq ft office space on the 2nd floor that you’ve used for storage for the past 10 years? Of course it could be a coworking space! Slap on some paint, add a few desks & some motivational posters and open up the doors. People will show up in no time and you’ll be rolling in the extra revenue coworking can bring. Because its hip, its cool, and it look super easy. It’s just office space, right? Not true.

The thing is, these places don’t run themselves.

Coworking is not just office space. It never has been.

The key to building and running a thriving coworking community? The experience. Coworking is about providing the right flexibility to help members be supported & productive in their professional lives. That requires a heavy dose of customer service – heavy.

Small coworking spaces in particular are competing not just with other commercial office space, they are competing with non-consumption. Why would a remote worker pay for office space outside of their home if it provides no added value? They won’t. They have a desk and chair at home. Coworking spaces must provide more than a place to put a laptop.

Too many people believe that technology can be a substitute for that human touch. It can’t. What it can do is support, streamline, and improve the experience for both sides. But it absolutely does not serve as a replacement for human interaction. What it can do is free up time and remove inefficiencies that are preventing us from connecting to one another in the right ways.

My members use our mobile app to save them time & to interact with the physical space. Technology in this case makes it easy to get things done quickly. They can do things like see what meeting rooms are available and book one while walking down the hallway or waiting for their espresso.

What does that give them in return? Time to do things technology cannot – talk to another member at the coffee pot, take a moment to pet the office dog, focus on their next call, the things that we need to continue to feel connected to other humans and to be productive.

What can technology help me with as a manager? Keeping track of all the human things. Great technology does more than just enable payments and room scheduling. It helps me keep tabs on what my members are doing, what they need, what they don’t like, and what I can do with all of that information to help provide an even better customer experience and grow my business.

If you’re going to run a business, focus on that business, because it’s not going to run itself.

Image for blog post The coworking value proposition part 4

A Reflection on Cowork Tahoe – Before & After Jellyswitch

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Our mission at Jellyswitch is to make coworking better – for members as well as for space owners and managers. We want to see the coworking industry grow & thrive. Coworking spaces are vital to supply the distributed workforce with the flexible workspace it needs now & in the future.

This week, I saw with clarity that mission being achieved in my own life as a coworking space owner.

The Tour

I love giving tours, it is one of my favorite parts of the business. I’ve given them hundreds of times. Tours serve as a way to highlight the space, but also to get to know my future community members.

All coworking space managers know this drill. The tour lasted less than 30 minutes. As we walked around the building, I gave my pitch about the benefits of joining, I asked questions about what kind of work they did, what they were looking for in a workspace, how their move to town was going, etc.

By the time we had circled back to the lobby, I had his timeline for joining, he had the Cowork Tahoe mobile app downloaded & created an account. I made sure he knew how to contact me, we shook hands & they left.

Then it hit me! The tour itself was nothing out of the ordinary, but I had this awestruck feeling as I realized that Jellyswitch really and truly has changed my business for the better. I had given a very different, remarkably better tour than I would have a year ago.

Walking through the building, I now pointed out different aspects of the meeting & workspace than I used to. I honed in on what it is like to walk in to the building for work each day, where to grab your coffee and the options available to get to work, and to get to work. I asked new questions directed at how he likes to work instead of just pointing at all the different seating options. I began guiding the discussion to find out whether he preferred a coffee shop vibe or needed to be distraction free and made sure to spend more time in the parts of the building he would like. The conversation was about the type of flexibility he needed to be productive day to day.

Why was this a change?

This tour was a much deeper dive into my customer’s needs. Zero fluff. I don’t think I gave bad tours before, but I know what I did this time is much, much better.

Jellyswitch lets me know exactly how my members use the space (at a level I could only guess at before). I know which meeting rooms are the favorites, when people are in the building, and even what their favorite snacks are. My members now quickly notify me of issues, often anonymously. I hear the good and the bad and respond immediately after seeing the push notification on my phone.

Jellyswitch illuminates the data behind my business. I have a deeper understanding of what my members need and I know what to highlight to a potential member. Now they can see how their needs will be met when they join my coworking space. They can picture themselves as members before they even sign up! And, having them download our app & sign up before the tour is finished means there are less steps remaining to close the deal.

This is not an incremental improvement – it’s a completely new experience. I never anticipated how much Jellyswitch would improve my day-to-day behavior. I expected my business to improve, but because of better tracking of memberships & invoicing, an easier sign up process, and by streamlining our operations. But, surprisingly, I am a much better operator now. The tech enables this.

This is the true power of great technology, when the tech supports you in such a way that you can leverage it to make improvements on the human side of the business, without even realizing it. It doesn’t replace the human side, it enhances it. This is what Jellyswitch has done for me. My coworking business, my community, and myself, are all stronger for it.