By Aoife O'Keefe

Good service is genuinely hard to find. Within Form Property, it's something we talk about often and regularly get frustrated about for good reason! When I try to recall times in the past few years where I experienced exceptional service, I can probably count them on one hand. Working in this industry has given me an eye for both good and bad service (a gift and a curse!). It feels as though something shifted in recent years, and people are content to overlook mediocre service, probably down to the rise of tech and self-service leading to more transactional interactions. However, when you're paying a premium, it just doesn't sit right.

We shouldn't be settling for poor standards. We need to actively drive customer experience forward by developing the next generation of professionals, instilling the values of professionalism, respect, consideration, and a proactive approach to service delivery.

When developing good service in a team, it can't be an afterthought. It can't be a sentence at the end of an induction to tick a box. It needs to be embedded into every aspect of how a team recruits, trains, and operates day to day. If these standards aren't modelled in leadership, there's little chance for them to succeed anywhere else. We also need to focus on our colleagues, ensuring no one has fallen into bad habits or complacency.

At Form, we've all been lucky to be exposed to senior-level decision making, and it's clear that right from the top, client satisfaction is always the key driver.

At No.1 Spinningfields, I manage the Front of House team and service delivery. We have developed a strong training programme with service excellence embedded throughout. From day one, we refer to a statistic that people make a judgement of you within seven seconds. That's not a lot of time to make a good impression, which means you need to be 'on' all the time. Our team is seen as an extension of the building's occupiers, so learning to tailor your approach for each interaction is a skill we start to develop early on. The FOH team are the front line, interacting with hundreds of visitors, staff members, contractors, and members of the public every day, and they're equipped not just to respond to queries, but to go further by adopting a ‘help not hinder’ approach.

Our security team are also highly trained in delivering excellent service and regularly receive positive feedback as a result.

Front of House service extends well beyond the regular streams of communication. It comes down to the smallest details that shape someone's experience of a space:

Is it clean, organised, and consistent every day?

Are issues picked up and resolved efficiently?

And when something goes wrong (which in facilities management, it inevitably will!), how are we responding?

How are we keeping people informed?

What are the most reasonable next steps to cause minimal disruption to our occupiers?

It's well known that more people share bad experiences than good ones. At Form, we want to create environments so welcoming and well-run that people are genuinely excited to spread the word about a positive experience. To ensure we are delivering high standards across all aspects of our management, we meet with each of our occupiers individually quarterly. This ensures all queries are captured, and our occupier contacts know we are always here and available for them.

Our supply chain is equally critical. We manage a large number of contractors, many of whom are involved in the day-to-day running of our assets. Their work reflects on ours, which is why we invest in those relationships, building partnerships and trust so that everyone is always working towards the same goal.

Most people have the ability to deliver five-star service, but it has to start with leadership. Not everyone will acknowledge the extra mile, but some will, and they'll go out of their way to say so. When we meet with our occupiers and they are happy, that's what makes it all worth it.

If you'd like to learn more about how Form approaches occupier experience and service delivery across our portfolio, we'd love to start a conversation.