Top 5 coworking community manager problems

Many entrepreneurs and established professionals thrive in coworking spaces due to their flexibility and enriched community culture. The creative environment that coworking spaces cultivate allows companies of all sizes to both kickstart their businesses and dodge expensive rent agreements.

Although coworking spaces are notorious for their modern and innovative approaches, they also come with their own set of difficulties, specifically when it comes to management. Community Managers have seemingly straightforward jobs. But when you really breakdown both responsibility and routine, there are quite a few coworking community manager problems that they deal with on a daily basis. The most notable and consistent ones are:

1.) Member Billing

Tackling automated billing is perhaps the most vital part of ensuring the success of a space. Finding an simple and elegant solution that is both efficient and accurate is difficult to come by. Many Community Managers have opted for spreadsheets and other ways of tracking payments, but have found that to be cumbersome and outdated (and not even automated).

2.) Room Booking

Like any workplace, coworking communities have a limited amount of space. Managers have to make difficult decisions on whether to utilize their space for general coworking, suites, hot desks, or conference rooms. Without a proper room booking system, it is borderline impossible to monitor space utilization. To assure rooms aren’t overbooked or being monopolized, Community Managers have to meticulously monitor room requests and step in if there are any issues.

3.) Lead tracking and management

As a coworking space grows, any manager will tell you that they must keep bringing in leads. With monthly membership contracts, turnover is high in the industry. Securing leads plays an important part in helping a space remain profitable, but without proper tools, lead management can be overwhelming and downright frustrating to maintain.

4.) Resources

Between parking, the community kitchen, and coffee, community members are always reaching out to management with questions. Questions that have usually been answered time and time again. While important in maintaining an efficient work environment, these questions take valuable time from the managers so they spend less time building a better community.

5.) Event Planning

One of the last major pain points of running a thriving coworking space is coordinating events with members. It can be super hard to organize events that keep the members engaged and most importantly, keep them as members. Relying on word of mouth is not effective and usually results in poor turn out. This puts immense pressure on the Community Manager to advertise and market every event and this is a fully time job itself!

Enter… Coworks

As members of a coworking space ourselves, we talked to hundreds of coworking managers and concluded that no one was happy with their tools. To help change the efficienty of the industry, we created an ecosystem of apps that makes both managing a coworking space and building community, well, easy.

1.) Member Billing

Member Billing can now be monitored entirely online by Community Managers. Each Manager is able to log into a web dashboard and easily see the payment made by their members. We also made the payment process more efficient by grouping members together with their respective companies to allow for one point of contact and most importantly, automatic billing!

2.) Room Booking

When creating a solution for room booking, our goal was to make the process quick and easy for both managers and members. With native mobile apps, Members can just pull out their phones and quickly see conference rooms availability. Our belief is that if it takes more than 30 seconds to search, find, and book a room, there’s something wrong… you can really do it in 10!

3.) Lead Tracking and Management

To better access potential members, we created a fully integrated CRM. This allows for automated lead creating and provides numerous options and configurations that makes managing leads easy. Tags like “Cold, Warm, or Hot” allows you to organize leads and maintain interaction until they convert.

Our light-weight CRM makes it easy to track new leads to bring more revenue and once they are ready to have access to your space, you can easily promote them to a member. No more manually transferring from spreadsheets or bloated CRM systems!

4.) Resources

We believe every member should have access to information on how to use their space. But we also find it unwieldy for managers to answer basic questions over and over like, “What’s the wifi?” or “How do I make coffee?”. This is why we created a resources section on the Coworks app! Members now have a self serve platform at their fingertips and that allows managers to focus on more important things.

5.) Events Calendar

With the Coworks app, tracking member engagement and attendance has never been easier! Once a member has decided to join an event they can sync with native calendar. This allows them to be reminded and plan accordingly. Not only do you get a headcount, but you can also see who is a regular attendee and know who to target in the future.

To learn more about how we optimize the coworking experience visit our “Why Coworks?” page and learn about our cost efficient options!