6. What problems do you have when communicating with your customers?

6. What problems do you have when communicating with your customers?

This question was asked to determine what obstacles the stakeholders have when trying to communicate their messages to their constituents. Thirty-seven of the participants responded to this question.

* Getting message to all.
* Too expensive. Advertising is hit or miss.
* Reaching the right audience at the right time.
* Difficult message to deliver due to stigma attached to the disease. Awareness of services we provide.
* Frequency/quality of contact.
* Reaching all the various groups on a consistent and regular basis. Effectively promoting capabilities.
* Customer follow through. Need to educate customers/working on.
* Can’t or don’t want to speak English.
* Only booking times. So many people who want to appear as guests but finding an accommodating date that won’t conflict with their work.
* It is very time consuming.
* Every client has a different challenge or set of challenges.
* We keep tapping the same audiences—how to reach a diverse crowd. We have a high price tag—how do we communicate across the financial gap?
* No one media outlet reaches the entire target population. Cultural, economic and linguistic differences.
* Not reaching everyone, literacy, language.
* Keep message fresh.
* Breaking down the silos that are designed to prevent infiltration by outsiders.
* Certain parts of the community don’t feel comfortable in discussing HIV/AIDS particularly due its mode of transmission (sexual/IV drug use). And this is unrealistic especially in regards to reducing transmission (it’s still a shameful disease).
* Not able to evaluate/track audience beyond zip code information to inform decisions and planning.
* None.
* Awareness of service. Strength of signal reliability of cable access providers (awareness, technology, skills, need to share).
* People are unaware of the continued infections because of stigma. Do not know the effectiveness of messages.
* Reaching our client population (low income and elderly). Language barriers.
* Not enough tech cross-over to show or promote. Strength of signal and equipment.
* ?35
* Reinforcing that job seekers come to job fairs “dressed for success.” Note: (Network of community partners contributes significantly to outreach success.)
* Phone tag.36
* Language barriers. Have done some transcription but then problem is bi-lingual staff to answer questions. New issues out in a timely manner.
* Sometimes access (lack of) to major media outlets; preventing distribution of information.
* Budget, positioning, overcoming myth.
* Cost! We are a nonprofit so advertising budget is extremely tight. Range of target market is diverse so reaching all through one channel is impossible.
* Difficulties to follow up. Listen reaction to my first communication.
* Lack of audience. Lack of audience response.
* They do not trust the system. They don’t think they can cause change. Ambivalence.
* Confusion with agencies with similar names. Not being able to get the full message across. Narrowing down target audience.
* People are not always getting what we try to communicate. There is a gap sometimes between the information sent and it actually getting to those we need it to reach.

The stakeholders’ obstacles in communicating their important messages to the community are significant. Overcoming those obstacles is important and necessary to the community as a whole. It is interesting that language barriers appeared many times as a common theme among the participants. We will address what can be done to help overcome language barriers in our Focus Group Conclusions part of this report.