Exit Interviews are great way to connect with, and learn from, the members who are leaving your coworking space.
In this post I’m going to touch on why your coworking space should be conducting exit interviews with any member who leaves, 10 guide questions you could ask, and some examples of how you can add exit interviews into your offboarding process.
After our blog post on celebrating graduating members, a number of spaces reached out about how they don’t currently do exit interviews.
So here’s 3 reasons why they could be great for you, your team and your community:
All three are net-positive for your space, turning the loss of revenue into actionable insights.
In order to better help you get the most out of these exit interviews, here’s some questions I’d suggest using as a guide, and tweaking for your own use.
1. Start with why you’re conducting this interview & check in with them personally.
Ok so not really a question, but it’s critically important to set the stage.
Thank them for being part of your community, and let them know that their answers to the questions aren’t there to offend or upset anyone, but to help your space to provide great value to other businesses today, tomorrow and 5 years from now.
Remember, the idea here is not to find out who to blame, but to dig into what you can do to improve to retain other customers longer, and improve the experience for all members.
2. Why are you leaving <SpaceName> today?
This allows you to find out what caused the business to leave. It might be something outside of your control, like say a recession, their business hitting a challenge; or may be an internal issue that needs to be looked at like staffing, cleanliness or pricing.
3. Would you recommend <SpaceName> to other businesses in <City>?
This question can be asked in a Yes/No format, be open ended or even have a net-promoter score 1-10 scale of how likely they’d be to recommend your solution.
This gives you insights into their overall experience and an opportunity to remind them to leave you a review on whichever platform(s) make the most sense for you or them.
4. What could <SpaceName> do better to support businesses like yours?
This question shows humility, and vulnerability, and is often the most useful question in an entire exit interview. It also gives you a way to stay in touch as/if you implement any of their suggestions.
5. What was your favorite thing about (or moment from) working at <SpaceName>?
This gives you an insight into the things you’re doing right, and also gives you some ideas on content marketing or testimonials that could be focussed on.
6. Did you collaborate with any other <SpaceName> members? If so, how did that go? How could collaborations be improved?
A bit of a double-barrel question, but a great way to find out how serendipitous your community is, and possibly get some insights into how you could facilitate more or better collaborations.
7. Given unlimited resources, what do you wish we could add to <SpaceName>?
This is a bit of a fun one, to see what crazy/fun/interesting ideas that could inspire events, partnerships and more.
8. Would you like to continue attending events or accessing member perks whilst you make your next moves?
A question that opens the opportunity to offering an alumni membership that includes discounted event/meeting room bookings, event access, slack/social/etc channel access and ofcourse your coworking perks program.
(See more ideas on how to celebrate graduating businesses.)
9. Could we share your coworking story?
This question extends the conversation into a way to leverage their success (or lessons) into useful local content about your space or for businesses in your neighborhoods.
10. How can <SpaceName> best support your business over the next 12 months?
A question that I love. Not only does it show that you and your community are open and willing to continue supporting their business. It also allows them to share what they’re working on, and challenges they’re expecting to need to tackle.
It’s worth noting that you don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) use all the questions, and should be delivered in as seamless or as empathetic a way as possible.
Some methods we’ve seen/heard work tremendously well:
I hope this helps you build upon your exiting member relationships.
Please do share it with your favourite coworking people.
To ramp up the value of your memberships for existing, new and alumni members check out how included helps you setup and run a powerful coworking perks program.
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