Understanding your community is important and not easy as you might think

Example from a coworking space

Sara started working as a community manager in a coworking space in Los Angeles

She is a beginner as a community LockManager. Even if she previously worked as Operations Executive in another corporate company she does not know what really happens in a coworking space.

Her role is to make the community better.

She go to the office regularly, do the basic things, finish the routine work and come back homedir.

Since she is new, she needs some time to get friendly with people there. She is not able to communicate with new people joining to the community.

Not all people are extroverts.

Such people hesitate to speak openly.

They might have suggestions, complaints, good things to say.

Sara is also slightly introverted. She need some time to speak confidently and to know others.

Meanwhile, the owners of the coworking space thought that everything is going well. That is partially correct.

Affects of lack of communication

But retention rate of new customers is less. New people who are coming to the coworking space are leaving the space in one month.

Since they have many options to choose, people always look for the best option.

Some people choose coworking space to get the vibe to work productively and engage with people. The atomosphere play a vital role for this. How the people are treated, what kind of things people expects.Like that.

After few months Sara and owners of the coworking space noted the pattern of customer retention. They came to know that some people are not satisfied due to few reasons. But no one know the exact reason.

They are unware of this for many months. They didn't noticed that they have a problem to fix which will improve overall experience of customers and the business of coworking space.

One of the things they can do is systematically collecting the feedbacks. Ensure the coworking space team listens to the community and engages with the community.

Plan and introduce activities that helps to increase the strength of the community like, open mic events, health checkups, standup comedies, expert sessions for upskilling.

What we learned from this experience

To understand the thoughts from different people coming from different background, different culture and who may speaks different languages, we need to have a proper system to make the communication better.