COMMENT: Traditionally, the real estate industry has not used live data to proactively manage a property, let alone the customer experience.
Property management has been characterised by reacting to complaints and being remote from the day-to-day operation of a property.
But active management of assets needs to be the new mantra for the property industry and using data to help people to be proactive and informed will become an essential component of this new modus operandi.
When a tenant or customer experiences a space, there are five key elements where data intelligence has a useful role to play in arming property owners and managers:
1. First impressions
The easiest way to measure whether a group of customers like a particular space is to measure the occupancy profile.
There is a lot of interest from property owners at present to trial new occupancy sensing systems that tell you when a space is occupied. These systems vary in cost and they have to preserve privacy.
In many properties, there is already an existing building system for generating a head count of how many people are in the property and, often, how many are on each floor – the access control system.
If this data can be streamed live and analysed, it can provide a first count of how many people are in the property and at what times of day.
If this existing source of data is used first it can then be supplemented with additional sensors, keeping costs down.
2. Convenience
The trend towards more flexible working means that any company’s office is now having to compete with other more desirable and more convenient locations.
If the location is not convenient then the property management team will have to work that bit harder to provide services in the property which add convenience – everything from in-house baristas to yoga classes, dry-cleaning and printing services.
Measuring convenience is hard but start-ups such as Placense are trying to help property owners and managers get a handle on footfall and movements to destinations around their properties.
Data from Google Maps can also provide a quick picture of nearby amenities. However, if location is not a natural strength for a property, then it may present an opportunity to increase income through a property.
For instance, in a business park or in a corporate office you have a captive audience of customers. There is a need to provide services for this transient community. The obvious example of this is where high street coffee chains have been offered a concession within a private office.
Active management of assets needs be the new mantra for the property industry and using data to help people to be proactive and informed will become an essential component of this new modus operandi
3. Ease of work
The ease with which tenants are able to work will be a key factor in their satisfaction with a space.
If their working day is disrupted because the office is too loud, the internet is down or they can’t access the people they need to work with, then their experience will be poor.
Measuring the impact of a space on customers’ business continuity is new. Normally, it is reactive after a complaint has been made. Most offices don’t monitor Wi-Fi connectivity at the point of the customer, for example.
A WiredScore certification will tell you whether you have good infrastructure in place, the service provider will monitor whether the main incoming service to the property is up or not, the IT team should be able to tell you whether all of the Wi-Fi access points are connected and live but no one can tell you live, from the customer’s perspective, whether they are experiencing a strong Wi-Fi signal which is not over-congested allowing them to access the internet at high speed.
This means the service management has to be reactive and cannot be proactive in the management of the customer experience.
4. Not being uncomfortable
In an office, you don’t normally notice when you are comfortable but you do notice when you’re not.
Leases don’t tend to have performance criteria for humidity or carbon dioxide/air quality, even though these factors are all known to affect wellbeing and human productivity.
Most commercial properties will have temperature sensors, but not sensors for humidity and carbon dioxide, so it is not always possible to monitor the operational performance of the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning.
Even in those properties with a building management system for the HVAC, these systems are usually not intended to be used live by the property manager to deliver the best customer experience.
This is why building systems analytics are now used by property managers to provide intelligence to proactively improve this experience.
5. Visible responsibility
If the way in which a space is operated is visibly unprofessional it could be a reputational risk.
If a property owner is seen to be homophobic or misogynistic that will affect business relationships.
The same goes for social and environmental responsibility. If a property is seen to be wasteful or damaging then some customers will care.
Tracking the popularity of different social and environmental issues via social media is one obvious way of staying abreast of potentially embarrassing behaviours but that is not the same as acting with integrity and clear purpose.
Some behaviours cannot be rectified quickly, so not acting responsibly in the first place when evidence is becoming much more readily available is a high-risk approach.
The themes which are particularly visible for the property industry at the moment include the acceptance and promotion of diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the need to act quickly on climate change.
These five elements are by no means everything that need to be considered to improve the tenants’ experience, but they are essential and can be actively managed with data intelligence.
The valuation of real estate is going to change so that properties are considered as more than physical assets, and more like businesses.
The income from the property service and the customers in the property will be just as valuable as the location, the physical asset and the strength of the leasehold agreements.
Sonny Masero is chairman of Demand Logic
