Guest Blog – HqO Launches at Jamestown’s Innovation & Design Building [Video & Takeaways]

On the heels of launching our Seaport neighborhood guide, we’re excited to announce the launch of our tenant experience platform at Jamestown’s historic Innovation and Design building in Boston. The IDB launch was a huge week for our team as the building clocks in at 1.4m sq ft, and fast forward five days of on-site amenities, in-app announcements, trivia and more, and over 1,000 tenants are now actively part of the HqO@IDB community.

Check out the quick video our team pulled together from the launch, featuring lots of happy tenants: https://youtu.be/RwSw8r4Oan0

The IDB is owned by Jamestown, a commercial landlord who is known for being one of the most advanced in how they think about and design their tenant experience. And having one of our initial CRE partners as obsessed as we are about tenant happiness guarantees that our mobile platform will be successful within any physical property.

Specifically, Jamestown has done an excellent job of understanding the small and big things that make going to work a little more fun, and now by leveraging HqO and giving tenants an app for the building, they’re putting together all the pieces of a really great tenant experience.

Here are a few things we’ve learned in just week 1 of our partnership:

THE AMENITIES CRAZE (IS REAL)

We worked with Jamestown to procure a number of onsite amenities that would really bolster our launch week and put HqO on the map for the thousands of tenants that walk in and out of their doors every day. Based on some informal surveys and more formal research, we decided on a handful of amenities that would grab tenant attention at the IDB: free espresso, treats from a hot donut shop in Boston, chair massages, manicures, and a food truck offering delicious waffles to the first 300 tenants to get in line and claim the offer in the app on their phone.

Tenants loved these options and we sold out of every single launch week amenity we offered, almost immediately. Amenities are often looked at as a trend or just straight up hype, but people love to have fun at work and this proves that they are no longer a nice to have but a must have.

A PORTAL FOR TENANT LIFE

A lot of the feedback we heard at the IDB, and what we hear frequently from other tenants in other buildings, is that they are just not aware of what’s available to them at work. Everyone’s email inbox is full and likely one of the first emails your tenants will delete is a newsletter from their office building, never mind the poorly designed signs and flyers in the lobby or elevator.

People expect everything to be available to them on their phone – whether they’re ordering a salad from sweetgreen, streaming TV/movies from Netflix, or RSVPing for the happy hour in their office lobby. Commercial real estate is not the exception any longer and the players that adopt mobile solutions as a portal for tenant life will not get left behind.

AN UNTAPPED FEEDBACK LOOP

One of our top priorities of being onsite that first week was to really engage the tenants in person as well as through our mobile concierge service. After five days of conversations – both in person and within the app – we gathered an incredible amount of feedback both on our application, but more importantly, on the actual building and tenant experience. We also gathered and analyzed a lot of app engagement data that will prove immediately valuable to our team and to those at Jamestown responsible for making tenant life better.

We’ve written about the secret benefit of proptech like HqO before – data, data, data. As a landlord in the 21st century, you can’t have enough of it. Tenant data just makes your property and your team more efficient.

CONSISTENCY IS KING

We are the first to recognize that a big launch week is only step 1 to fostering a truly engaged tenant community. We’re super excited that our thesis rang true – tenants want tech-enabled amenities and experiences. However, a consistent and positive tenant experience will be what sets apart the winners in this space. Our team is fully dedicated to the HqO@IDB community and already have a year’s plan to ensure that the IDB is one of the best places to work in Boston.