Exchange Quay, Manchester’s flagship office campus, has launched CBRE’s ‘Host’ service, a people-led, tech-enabled platform designed to deliver world class customer experience for occupiers, as well as integrate property management using a single mobile app.
The roll out of Host follows the implementation of a dedicated placemaking and customer experience strategy for Exchange Quay also operated by managing agents CBRE, responsible for property and estate management.
CBRE’s placemaking team is appointed to drive the activation and engagement strategy onsite, working with Till AM. To support the delivery onsite, CBRE has also recruited two dedicated Front of House Hosts who will play an important role helping to engage occupiers, manage the app content and facilitate occupier events.
In light of the recent home working trend in response to the pandemic, landlords must now incentivise tenants to invest more time and money back into community and are tasked with differentiating the office as a more appealing, productive and collaborative space to work. Tenants and occupier workforces are demanding more from their buildings and reimagining the space in a post-Covid climate is essential. Host has been adopted to address this and further enhance the occupier experience.
Led by CBRE’s Host professionals, it is a tailored experience platform that connects employees to their work environments, amenities and communities that matter most. It allows Exchange Quay to manage workplace needs through an innovative, branded Host mobile app which makes it easier for occupiers to discover, access and manage all it has to offer, as well as experience the full value of the building by elevating on and off-site amenities.
Occupiers have direct access to amenities via a single, customer-facing, intuitive app from news and communications, food and beverage e-commerce, events and classes, concierge services, retail offers and perks to community and wellness initiatives, amenity bookings, service requests, access management and more.
The app data can also be matched with insights from the site team, providing actionable intelligence used to further enhance and drive delivery to occupiers. Occupiers gain on-demand access to perks and amenities which improves productivity, happiness and wellbeing; they enjoy easy, self serve connection, gain valued awareness of building amenities and operations and have a real sense of community at the touch of a button.
The soft launch of the Host service has been used to engage and welcome tenants and workforces back onto site at Exchange Quay from return to work checks, health and safety policy, updates and announcements on what’s changed since lockdown to live events.
Initiatives to put occupiers at ease on return have included weekly HiiT, Yoga and Pilates classes to post-lockdown and working from home ‘Feel Good Boxes’, powered by Host Connect, a scheme to engage and ease everyone back into work on-site. Recent events include Olympic Sports Day; Street Food Markets and F1 Pitstop Challenge with plenty more planned during winter.
Les Lang, Director, Till AM said:
“We are delighted with the response from our tenants and workforces since soft launching the Host service designed and managed by CBRE. It truly offers us world-class property technology that ultimately makes Exchange Quay an even better place to work and supports our strategy for a collaborative, cohesive community.”
John McHugh, CBRE’s Head of Host, Place & Community commented:
“The Host technology complements the integral role placemaking plays in our sense of place and our proposition. We already have more than 400 users and look forward to seeing more people access this high quality service as we roll it out fully over the next quarter.”
