In order to find potential customer segments, we were trying to identify scenarios, in which communication difficulties would pose a major pain to a significant group of users. As discussed in the last post, we were trying to make out situations, where communication difficulties would not only bother a lot of people to a small extend. Instead we were looking for situations that would make a rather narrow group of people actively search for a solutions even if they had to pay money for it. Three things that came to our minds were pharmacies, hospitals and the police stations.
To obtain objective information from the interviews and get authentic answers we prepared the following lead questions:
- how many of your clients do not speak spanish? (--> are there potential customers at all?)
- do they have trouble communicating? (--> do they have the problem that we would expect?)
- if so, where are they from? Age group? Patterns? (--> detailed information?)
- if so, how do they solve the problem? (--> is there an existing satisfactory solution?)
- is there anything else that causes trouble in this context? (--> are there other potential problems worth solving?)
To not distort the results, we told our interview partners that we were taking a survey on the life of foreigners in the city and did not reveal the actual scope of the interview.
Pharmacies
Pharmacies were our first target so we conducted 12 interviews in pharmacies within different parts of the city. Mostly communication was not perceived as a problem. Basically all pharmacies said that they had at least one english speaking staff member at all times and that most clients from other countries had sufficient knowledge of english to get along. Also, there were several other possible solutions: Many clients already knew the exact name of the medication they wanted to buy and at times, foreigners would bring somebody with good english or spanish knowledge to assist the process.
--> As a consequence, we decided that in this context the pain was not big enough for people to look for alternative solutions.
Police Station
Our second guess was that many people would have to go to the police station to report theft or other incidents. So we inquired how these situations were handled at the police station. Although in fact many international tourists would report to the police, communication did not seam to be a big problem. Again, staff had good knowledge of english and for more severe cases there were professional interpreters available. --> The police in Barcelona did therefore already solve the problem in a professional way.
Hospital
In the hospital the results were different: We visited two hospitals (... , ...) and although some staff members had an respectable knowledge of english, they told us that it was at times difficult to communicate with all clients. They told us that especially in public hospitals this was the case. For this reason they sometimes recommended clients to approach private international doctors centers that were better equipped to assist non spanish speaking clients.
Foreigners Office (Oficina de ExtranjerÃa)
The foreigners office was one of the locations were the lack of sufficient communication was apparent. Staff did not know or even purposefully refuse to speak english. Several of the waiting foreigners we talked to were frustrated by the whole process because it made it very difficult for non spanish speakers. This was confirmed by several people (6 persons) with different cultural background. The majority of the persons in the waiting room were either students on an exchange program (european and non european) or people in their 30ties that had found work in Barcelona.
Since we had not yet received clear results and were not able to identify a deep pain in a certain context, we decided to be more open to other possible problems in the framework of international traveling and communications. For this reason we decided to look for insights that tourists directly or hotel staff could give us. Our assumption hereby was that many tourists would turn to the reception desk in a hotel if they had a problem with communication that they would not be able to solve by themselves.
Hotels
Answers in hotels we went to were very similar: We learned that most guests had a sufficient knowledge of english and only few visitors would have trouble communicating. As could be expected, the customer groups that had a hard time with speaking any foreign language were either middle aged and elderly asian people (especially china) and elderly from different countries in Europe. Besides checking in and out, they would ask about tourist information, tour offerings but also advice for restaurants, evening entertainment or things such as cleaning services.
Tourists
In talking to tourists directly many of the previously retrieved information were being confirmed. Communication was mostly not considered a big problem. Even by e.g. elderly german people that spoke only little english. However being asked what could have been improved during their stay, several people independently pointed out that they had ended up going to tourists attractions and having to wait for several hours before they were let in. This was because they did not know that tickets had to be reserved online to enter at a particular time. Also they said that they felt like many restaurants would charge inappropriate prices or would try to actually charge more then what had been ordered. It was mostly not the lack of opportunities that they considered as inconvenient but the fact that it was not easy to know which of the places were actually worth the money and an authentic experience and which were just a tourist rip off.
Very good insights were given from travelers staying with host families, couch surfing or Air BnB. They pointed out, that many of the locations they went to had been recommended by their hosts and that they would e.g. discuss their plans with their hosts to get local insights and recommendations. They also seamed to be less frustrated then tourists who did not have the opportunity to get this kind of information.
This led us to the result, that translation and interpretation might be a problem that many tourists might have to deal with - but one that most of them are able to master to a certain extend. At the same time it became apparent, that many tourists are not completely happy with their experience abroad because they feel like an anonymous tourist with little authentic experience or because they lack information on what is worth spending time and money.
The observations had helped us understand our potential customers better but also forced us to over thing our current concept. Since we were not able to narrow the concept down to a very precise problem it was difficult to develop an elaborate costumer journey or a strategy canvas for our industry.
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