5 Tips For Collecting Feedback in Your Coworking Space

Listening to and learning from your clients is a critical part of operating any business. Surveys are a great way to do just that.

The people who use your services are willing to share their opinions. It’s up to you to create a space where they feel comfortable enough to provide honest feedback.

Giff Constable, co-author of Talking to Humans, stresses the importance of not only finding the right people to talk to when looking to improve, but also asking the right questions, and knowing what to do with the answers.

The following is a guide to help you gather feedback from your community using a coworking-specific feedback survey.

When should you administer a coworking survey?

The best time to administer a coworking survey depends on the questions that you’re asking and the information you want to receive.

Consider the amount of time a given member has spent in your workspace and tailor your questions to fit their experience.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Send an onboarding experience survey to members after their first month of membership
• Send a general experience survey to members after their first three to six months of membership
• Send a community and services survey to members after one year of membership

What are best practices for sending out surveys?

When sending out a survey, it’s always best to make sure they fit into the busy schedules of whoever is receiving them. Here are best practices to follow when sending out coworking surveys:

• Send out shorter surveys
• Make them mobile-friendly
• Send them immediately after a customer completes a desired action
• Send a follow-up email for those who don’t complete the survey

Take, for example, the hospitality industry. Hotels send out their surveys immediately after a customer checks out, when the service is still top-of-mind.

Use these best practices to help guide you in when and how you send out surveys to your customers.

What types of questions should you ask your members?

The questions you choose to ask your members will depend on the information you want to gather. If you’re looking for feedback around a particular event for example, you’ll tailor your questions to fit this need.

If you’re looking to distribute a more general survey, here are some questions to consider asking:

• Workspace experience: “How would you rate the amenities offered?”
• Customer service experience: “How satisfied were you with the service you received?” 
• Overall experience: “How likely is it that you would recommend our workspace to a friend or colleague?”

This guide gives you a great overview of what kinds of questions to ask and how to ask them.

How should you survey your coworking members?

Once you finalize your questions, you’ll need to focus on designing the questionnaire form itself.

The best way to collect feedback from your coworking members is with a digital survey. They’re easy to administer, easy to track, and easy to pull data from.

We recommend using Typeform, a survey tool used by many of our coworking clients. Survey respondents are known to engage with this well-designed tool quickly because it asks one question at a time through an intuitive interface (bonus – it’s also mobile-friendly!)

After completing the design of your online form, send it out to your relevant members. There are a few ways you can do this:

• Email it to members directly or via a push notification
• Publish it on social media
• Publish it on to a private, member-only community feed 
• Put a link on your website
• Place a QR code in your coworking space that people scan for access

Which way you choose to go will ultimately depend on the level of security and personability of your survey.

What do you do after you ask your survey questions?

Next comes the most crucial part of this process: data analysis. In order to complete this step, begin by defining your survey’s KPIs.

One important survey metric is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). This score is gathered by asking the question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this coworking space to others?”

This is a powerful question because it gauges a customer’s overall sentiment towards your service. NPS can also indicate customer loyalty and since they are easy to understand and benchmark, they appear in most questionnaires.

However, the score doesn’t have the in-depth or actionable information that can be gleaned out of open-ended questions. It can also be a very subjective indicator, thus it’s a good idea to ask a multitude of questions and define a few metrics to align with your overall survey objective.

Once your survey ends, the real work begins. Immediately following the conclusion of the survey, make sure you:

• Send out a note of gratitude to your members for their participation
• Prepare to communicate the insights gathered from your survey back to members
• Write down how you intend to implement the feedback or the issues that were brought to light

You can choose to install shorter programs or initiatives during this “feedback implementation process” or spur transformative cross-company action if your results indicate the need for greater change.

If you come across particularly critical findings, immediately offer support to help rectify the issue at hand, while you work towards providing a long-term solution.

How often should you distribute a coworking survey?

The most successful brands make a habit of being curious about their customers. They make sure to regularly check back with their customers and reinvent their service offering.

It’s best practice to build out a timeline for subsequent feedback surveys, such as on a quarterly or half-yearly basis.

As a coworking space, forging deeper connections with your members is crucial to your success. If you can keep talking to your members then you can continue to deliver value to them and in turn build a truly successful business.

Understanding your customer’s needs is an invaluable skill in today’s competitive business environment. By interpreting feedback and effectively tailoring your offering, you can help make your clients happier, and grow your revenue.