The Monday of August 3, 2020 would’ve been any other regular workday for most of us.
But as for June Wee, a Senior Community Manager at Colony, a luxury coworking space in Malaysia, her Monday morning started rather alarmingly when she received a text message on her way to work.
It was from her guest (what Colony calls their members), asking a rather odd question.
“What’s the shipping duration like if I was to send something to Langkawi?” June recalled the question asked by her guest.
It turns out that her guest’s boss urgently needed his spare laptop in Colony shipped to Langkawi by Wednesday. His current laptop broke and he had a crucial meeting to attend on Thursday.
Thinking Of Solutions Outside Of The Box
After a few calls, June found that most courier services would not be able to deliver it by Wednesday. For example, DHL could only make the delivery by next Monday, and on Friday for UPS.
And those two were the fastest couriers out of the eight she contacted. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, courier services had to adhere to new and lengthier procedures for deliveries across states.
The clock was ticking, so June and her guest needed a solution and quick. Then, they struck gold.
“To our surprise, flying over to Langkawi was one of the cheapest options. My guest decided that they would assign someone from their team, or anyone else they knew, to go.” June had another suggestion: someone from Colony’s team could personally deliver the laptop too.
However, no one was available for the trip, so June stepped up.
Although the guests were happy to pay, we found out from June that Colony has actually absorbed the costs instead.
A Whole Fund Dedicated To Guest Happiness
It’s easy to say that this sounds really out of Colony’s job scope or offerings.
After all, what’s a coworking space doing, sending a team member all the way across state borders to deliver 1 laptop and in this current situation? And this is what Colony meant when they want to bring more to the table when it comes to their notion of hospitality.
To start with, they have a Guest Happiness Fund that Community Managers are given full liberty to spend on guests, capped at RM100 per day for each guest.
It’s usually used for surprising guests if they’re having a bad day or in need of a little pick-me-up during work. For example, buying an extra mouse for a guest to keep in her Colony office, as she would often forget to pack hers from home.
Since the flight was well above their RM100 allowance, June explained her guest’s predicament to her General Manager, Nitaya, and got the green light.
That’s how she found herself on a flight to Langkawi with the spare laptop on Wednesday morning.
Upon her arrival, her guest’s boss was shocked to see June instead of a random Colony team member. He even brought her to her favourite beach in Langkawi as a show of gratitude, before she got on the same-day flight back to KL.
June’s journey is just one of many instances where Colony went above and beyond with their hospitality services to guests.
Constantly Building On Their Trademark Hospitality
And to Colony, June’s instance of surpassing the daily Guest Happiness Fund isn’t the first time it has happened.
Alan Woo, another Senior Community Manager at Colony told us, “It’s not uncommon for a Community Manager to do a ‘wow’ moment for our guest which surpasses the fund we’ve placed every now and then.”
One such moment was when one of their guests (Software Q), upgraded their office in Colony to take up the biggest private suite at their KLCC, Vipod Residence branch.
As a sign of warm welcome and congratulations, the Colony team custom ordered acrylic signage for the guest, complete with their company logo. The signage was then placed in the corridor of the hallway leading to their suite.
“We disguised our intent by asking for their logo under the pretext of updating our directory that we had,” Alan shared.
“The signage got completed and installed in under a week which was timely as our guests shared with us that they were also in the midst of getting a signange done for their office too. . Needless to say, the owner was shocked and really touched by our efforts when he came over after the long weekend.”
Providing Hospitality To Guests During COVID-19
During MCO when fewer guests were at Colony, the team didn’t limit their hospitality to just within those four walls.
Instead, they extended it to reach out to each and every one of their guests for a virtual check-in.
When they found out some of their guests had to return to their home countries due to COVID-19, Colony’s team packed a special care package containing all the travel essentials they may need.
These included face masks which came with a plastic holder, hand sanitisers and other COVID-19 prevention necessities.
To help businesses counter the effects of COVID-19, Colony has also rolled out a new Business Encouragement Initiative, giving out 3 months of free rental and 50% off on their meeting room and event spaces in KL Sentral.
You can also find June there as she is one of the Community Managers in KL Sentral.
Having experienced Colony’s hospitality firsthand myself (and so have my colleagues, multiple times in the past), we can say it really is on a different level.
You can request one thing and they’ll deliver it in a way that’s better than expected, and sometimes they do it before you even think about requesting for it.
Being a higher-end coworking space (with matching membership fees), I would say that I would expect this much from them though if I were a member myself. Even despite that, they’ll still find ways to surprise you.
- You can find out more about Colony coworking space here.
- You can read more of what we’ve written on Colony here.
Featured Image Credit: Colony
