Tenant Engagement Apps. Do they really work?

Here are my top 3 tips for identifying whether yours is working or not.

1 - Cost Per User Analysis

Sounds simple right? And you're correct, it is. That said, I've never spoken to anyone who could tell me this answer and it's the most obvious one.

You want to engage with the tenants, but there’s no point engaging with a small percentage of users, you need to reach a mass audience!

Firstly, you need to know how many people are using your app. In the tech space, we talk about MAU (month active user). Ask your tenant app provider to show you this in a raw data format rather than a marketing graphic. Ideally, you want users to be engaged daily but let’s start with small steps first.

Now that you have that number you can work out your CPAU.

Here’s a quick formula to get to that figure:

Licence fee x contract length + setup fee + hardware + anything else (such as support, integration etc) ÷ number of contract years ÷ MAU = ￡x.

Example:

￡10,000 x 3 + ￡5,000 + ￡3,000 ÷ 3 ÷ 400 = ￡31.66 per user, per annum

2 – Operational Efficiency

There is a limit to how much tech can engage, and the most engaging tech of all is not tech. It’s us, the humans. How many times have you called a customer support bot only to shout “I want to speak to a human”?!

With that, tenant engagement apps can free up time taken for manual and mundane tasks during the management of a property or properties. This time can then be invested back into being more personable, more engaging, and more human.

You don’t want to walk up to your Building Manager or Front of House team only for them to shoo you away as they are knee-deep in paperwork or spreadsheets.

When selecting your tenant engagement app, you will have most likely seen a whole roster of features and functionally to win you over. But are they working? First you need to know how long that task took without the tech.

Let’s look at one of my favourites, Permits to Work. More often or not these are paper based, manual and time consuming. Work out how long they currently take to complete, for example 1 hour (that’s from initiating to sign off), and then estimate how many you complete within a year.

Now compare that to a digital Permit to Work. For this example, we will say it takes the Building Manager 15 minutes. That’s a 75% increase in productivity and time saving, all of which can be given back to the tenants in the form of human engagement.

Do this exercise with all the modules/features that you have signed up for. In my experience, applications are not fully utilised, so before looking to buy or replace, review what you currently have, and see if it can be better utilised to free up pesky admin work and increase your tenant engagement.

You now have the ROI for operational efficiency.

3 – Attract and Retain Tenants - This is the big one!

I could write a whole article on this (and perhaps one day I will), but if you want to take a deeper dive into this feel free to check out what the tenant experience app providers have to say.

Just copy this into your google search: “tenant engagement attract and retain tenants”.

The most expensive building is an empty one. And sadly, we still have lots of those.

So, with the promise of attracting and retaining tenants, surely a tenant engagement app is a no brainer?

Well, yes and no.

I’ve asked over 50 companies and buildings if their tenant engagement app has attracted and retained tenants, and only 2 said yes. To be fair, it’s a very tricky questions to answer, and almost impossible to pin-point if a tenant has signed up purely because you had a tenant app.

I think we can all agree that tenants don’t sign a lease because of an app. The location, space, fit out, cost etc will always be a bigger factor over an app. That said, many companies are seeking a tech enabled space, and more importantly, a sustainable and environmentally friendly space. This is something tenant engagement apps really can help with as they are often the aggregator for smart building solutions, such as access control and HVAC.

Attraction is hard to pinpoint, but what about retention?

Again, a hard one to nail down, however, there are things you can do with tenant apps to help with retention.

Survey your tenants. Ask them outright, are they happy? If you don’t get any response you need to work on a user adoption strategy. Yes, free cupcakes and a 10% off code for coffee might get them to download an app, but it will not keep them coming back. You need to provide tenants with something that is of value to them, an amenity, something that genuinely helps with a pain point in their everyday working lives.

Data. Check activity logs. If a company in your building used the app regularly and now they have stopped, does that mean they are no longer active in your building and moving to more hybrid, remote scenario, or are they looking to leave full stop?

Helpdesk. Do you have tenants that are constantly complaining? If so, these could be a flight risk.

Occupancy sensors. Check the data on the flow of how many people are in and out of your space. If you don’t have these, the best way is to check access control data. Check for trends, downtimes, and busy times. Filter this data by company if you can and see if you have occupiers that are using your space less and less. If so, why is that, and how can you encourage them to use the space more?

Thank you for reading and feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.