How Workspace Uses Automations to Deliver Consistent Experiences

When Justin decided to level up his tech stack to scale his thriving coworking business, a lot of changes happened. They switched from a disjointed system of tools to Optix. They ditched their CRM and saved in credit card feeds. And they also started automating parts of their business they had never automated before.

As it turned out, Automations was the cherry on top of a technological transformation – it was the missing puzzle piece in building scalable infrastructure for Workspace. Now with over 70 automations running, Justin has shown just how impactful Automations can be in delivering consistent, personalized experiences that make members swoon.

Here’s how he gets it all done with the help of Optix.

Before Automations: Juggling too much at once

• Justin wasn’t sure if their team was “big enough” to benefit from Automations
• He and his team relied heavily on manual processes
• His goal with automation was to stop spending time on admin (and start spending time on growth)

Before Optix, Justin was using a collection of disjointed tools for different parts of his business including booking, accounting, customer relationship management, and email marketing. This created data silos wherein data was not easily shared or accessed from one system to another, making it challenging to automate different processes.

This led his team to rely heavily on human resources and manual work, even for repetitive processes like member onboarding. They were manually sharing WiFi credentials, sending welcome emails, connecting with new members and more, all while trying to stay consistent across five locations without letting anything slip through the cracks.

Despite these inefficiencies, Justin thought he was too small of an operation to see the value in Automations. That is until he realized he was spending too much time on admin when what he really needed was to start building a company.

Getting Started with Automations: one step at a time

• They focused first on the experiences that would give their community managers more time back
• This included processes like member onboarding, task creation, and booking follow-ups

Justin appointed his community manager, Kerry, to champion the set-up of Automations across five locations. Having a dedicated owner of Automations for your team can be a great way of making sure things get done and come together smoothly, even when things get busy.

Kerry opted to focus first on the areas that would give her back the most time and make the highest impact. This included:

• New member onboarding: identify areas of the onboarding process that could be automated (and which ones couldn’t)
• Task creation and assignment: create tasks for in-person touchpoints out of automated workflows
• Resource bookings: create automations related to after someone makes a booking to simplify follow-ups

From here, they worked with the Optix team to refine their automations and automation strategy for the highest impact and business alignment.

After Automations: Consistency, scale, and simplicity

Despite his initial hesitation, Justin is now all-in on automating as many of the redundant manual tasks that he can.  Today, Justin and Kerry are using Automations to:

• Deliver a consistent experience: with five locations and a brand image to uphold, consistency is key. Automations means no member slips through the cracks and everyone receives the same messaging at the same predefined intervals.
• Create a better onboarding experience: of the 70 automations Workspace has running, many of them support with onboarding new members or their members’ experience in the first few months, whether it’s sending them an email with their WiFi credentials or making a task for Kerry to check in after their first month.
• Improve their marketing: with Automations, Justin is able to improve aspects of their marketing including nurture sequences, review collection, and other strategic follow-ups to encourage upselling and reviews.
• Give them their time back: the biggest benefit of Automations for teams like Justin’s is giving them their time back so they can spend more time doing the things that will help the business grow, not admin work.

Above all, Automations supports Justin in his goal of being hospitality-first and delivering exceptional member experiences. Not only are members receiving better onboarding into the community, Justin and Kerry can now devote more of their time to continuing to go above and beyond in supporting their members in-person.

It creates a smoother, more professional experience, all with very little effort.

Top 3 Automations Workspace is loving right now

What are the automations that the Workspace team can’t get enough of? Here are three that are having a big impact on their mighty team.

1. Onboarding new members

Each of Workspace’s five locations has a tailored onboarding automation that onboards new members into their specific location. This one is huge for ensuring a consistent experience and that each member receives the information they need to navigate their new membership or office with ease. Now they don’t have to worry about four different community managers writing emails in their own way anymore.

2. Document signing

With the newest automatic document signing feature, the Workspace team is automatically sending document leases or agreements to new private office members for signing. The e-signature flow makes it easy to automatically collect signatures on documents when a new user signs up or when there is a new plan added to an account.

The community managers don’t think about this step or need to access another tool to send lease agreements anymore. It all happens automatically in the exact moment Workspace needs it to.

Because every member is receiving and signing the document, it can also be used as insurance and a point of reference in case someone is in violation of their term agreements.

3. Offboarding and review collection

When a meeting room booking ends, an email is automatically sent to the person who made the booking asking for a Google review. As Justin says, they haven’t historically had a ton of reviews. But now, by simply automating the request via Optix, every few weeks one trickles in. This has given them a huge boost for their business with very little effort involved. Better yet, they no longer have to remember to do it…it just happens.

Upgrading to Automations+: More actions, more impact

With over 70 automations already running and an appetite for scaling even further, Justin found himself brushing up against the limits of what the standard plan could do. Rather than slow down, he chose to level up again.

By upgrading to Automations+, Justin unlocked more monthly automation actions, something his team quickly put to use across their five locations. But even more exciting were the premium triggers and actions now available to them, like the ability to automatically add allowances to a user’s account, making it easier to reward their community in real-time, automatically.

Justin and his team are also using Automations+ to automatically adjust a user’s status after a set period of time, making it easier to manage members without adding loads of manual work for the team.

For a team committed to delivering hospitality-first experiences, these new capabilities have helped deepen relationships with members and extend the kind of thoughtful, consistent service that sets Workspace apart.

Scalability made possible by Automations

Now that Justin is operating five locations, he’d love to see how he can use Automations to continue to grow his business while making life easier for him and his team. Although he has 70 automations up and running (and counting!) he recognizes he’s at the tip of the iceberg in terms of maximizing his use of automation in his business.

Up next for him are new automations to help upsell and increase retention even more. Justin and Kerry are also continuing to deepen their understanding of automation to create a more scalable infrastructure that can be replicated again and again. We couldn’t be more thrilled with the success Workspace is finding with Automations and are excited to see where they take Automations+ next!