6 Steps to Improve Transparency in Your HOA's Communication Efforts

Managers and board members often struggle with improving transparency in their communication strategy - both internal organization visibility and externally with residents. When companies lack visibility into their communication efforts, they can lose up to $62.4 million in productivity according to Ring Central. It can also lead to a decline in resident satisfaction and even the potential for liability. In contrast, having visibility into your communications efforts means you can:

• -Keep your team on the same page and thus deliver a better resident experience.-Identify successes in your communications strategy that you can repeat.
• -Identify areas in your communication strategy that you need to improve on.
• -Protect your community from potential liability.

In this post, we'll cover 6 steps you can take to improve transparency in your community's communication strategy.

1) Designate Responsibilities

The first step to improving transparency in your communications efforts is to designate responsibilities. This way, you can set clear expectations on who will be responsible for communicating with residents. There are a few ways in which you can designate responsibilities:

1. -By role - You can designate a maintenance manager the responsibility of sending maintenance-related messages to the community. A social events coordinator could send out event-related messages.
3. -Watchers - If there is a manager or a board member who needs to be aware when any message goes out, you can assign them the role of a watcher and copy them on the communications.

2) Improve message deliverability

Your residents’ text numbers or emails may change from time to time, so it’s vital that your database has the latest information. Not having accurate contact information will adversely affect your message deliverability. It also means your residents aren’t receiving your messages and that could increase a community's liability. A communications platform can provide you with insights on which residents' contacts are invalid and need to be fixed.

3) Focus your message on only those who need it

When communicating with your residents, it’s important to send specific messages to only those who need them through segmentation. That helps you to build trust with your residents while ensuring they aren’t frustrated by receiving messages that don’t impact them. Repeated, unimportant messages or stimuli can result in residents missing actual important messages. Automated communication solutions can help you create message groups for varying purposes. Consider these examples to segment your list:

• -Residents who reside near lakes or waterfronts to send quick emergency messages.
• -Residents who live near the northeast stack of an apartment building for maintenance-related messages.
• -Residents who are interested in certain activities or being part of a committee.

4) Build trust with your residents

Trust and transparency are key to operating a community smoothly. When you communicate frequently and consistently, residents are less likely to call the office with questions or complaints. The more informed your residents are, the more productive and organized your team will be.

Ways to foster a community of trust:

• -Communicate regularly with your residents about maintenance, changes in the community, decisions made in board meetings, upcoming events, and more.
• -Promote self-service within the community so residents can access the latest information about their unit/home and community. Online portals or websites allow residents to make payments online, submit maintenance or support requests, access documents, view upcoming events and connect with other residents.
• -Showcase your community culture by creating a regular e-newsletter for your residents. The newsletter can include community achievements, member spotlights, upcoming events, and local businesses or causes.

5) Know what messages have been sent out

Knowing what messages have been sent out to your community is key to improving visibility in your communication efforts. Automated communication solutions enable managers to keep a history of all communications sent so you can pull them up for future reference.

A communications archive that is easily accessible can benefit your community in numerous ways:

• -It reduces the back and forth communication among employees, including those working after-hours. If a staff member is out or has left the company, others will know what was done.
• -A substitute manager who usually doesn’t manage a community can easily figure out what messages have been sent out. That way, they can respond to resident questions or complete other tasks.
• -It reduces the community's risk of liability.

6) Measure your communication efforts

Understanding the impact of your communications efforts is essential to your community's outreach strategy. That way, you can identify the successes in your communication efforts as well as what you can improve. For example, if you find that residents are consistently getting your messages but not opening them, you may need to improve the subject lines by making them more clear and more direct. Or, if inbound calls to the office have increased after you've sent out a message, that may indicate your message needs more details. Automated communication solutions can provide real-time analytics including whose calls went to voicemail or which residents clicked on a link in an email.

Conclusion

Transparency is vital to your communication efforts. It starts from preparing your communication list and knowing who will be receiving your message to measuring your communication efforts. As a recap, these are the 6 steps that are important to creating transparency in your communication efforts:

1. -Designate Responsibilities - Assign someone the responsibility of managing outreach within your community.
3. -Improve deliverability of your message - You can increase the efficiency of your communication efforts by identifying invalid/bounced contact information and correcting it.
5. -Message Segmentation - Cut through the noise by sending relevant messages to residents.
7. -Build trust with your residents - Communicate regularly with your residents about how they want to hear from you. Take community building a step further by promoting self-service within the community where your residents can access important information and be involved in the community.
9. -Keep a history of your communications - Knowing what communications have been sent out improves internal communication with employees and also protects the community from potential liabilities.
11. -Measure your communication efforts - Better understand how your communication efforts are panning out so you can repeat successes and identify ways to improve.

Link to the complete article: https://www.pilera.com/2022/03/hoa-communication-transparency-with-pilera.html