Assessing Your Clients' Digital Access, Literacy and Comfort - Questions You Can Use

Are you asking your clients about their digital access, literacy, and comfort as part of your intake or assessment processes? You should be.

You're all providing some form of hybrid service now. You need to understand your clients' abilities, preferences, and needs when it comes to where digital fits into the service mix. You may be wondering about practices for assessing a client’s readiness to engage with technology.

My sense from workshops, conversations, and meetings I have with sector folks is that many of you have not yet added questions to your intake. My pitch to folks has always been that the data you get makes your service technology decisions much easier.

Let's say you serve 12,000 clients a year. Imagine what you'll learn if you ask a question like Which communication methods would you feel comfortable using to receive information from our organization, or, what is your preferred method of communication with us (for reminders or sending resources). After 3 months you'll have 3,000 points of data telling you something like 80% want to communicate with WhatsApp, 75% want text messages, etc.

You will know exactly what technologies to look into, review, and determine if and how you can integrate them into your service work.

It can really be that simple.

I've made suggestions over the years about the questions. Recently I've been working with a long-time client, North York Community House (NYCH). We've come up with some questions and when to ask them in their online client intake flow (look for a very cool hybrid service toolkit from them later this year).

Device Access and Communication Preferences

NYCH has a simple online welcome form that asks enough questions to learn a bit about the client, but doesn't overwhelm them. They're also planning to add the questions to in-person intakes and assessments. We decided to add 3 questions to that form - Device Access and Communication Preferences. Clients provide basic information about the tech they use. They also share their preferred communication tools and methods.

Service Access and Online Experience Preferences

Clients are then referred to a longer registration form to formally register for services and get connected to a staff member. We added 3 questions to that form - Service Access and Online Experience Preferences. Clients provide information about their digital comfort, preference and need for hybrid services. For example, perhaps they cannot attend in-person services, or they prefer or need to access in-person services.

Digital Skills and Access

Ultimately, it will be up to frontline staff to assess their clients' readiness for hybrid services. Doing so will also influence the type of hybrid service staff decide to provide to their clients. Most programs have additional intake and registration forms. We added 7 questions that can be added to those forms to help determine client Digital Skills and Access. These help determine things like: client internet connectivity, access to a quiet space in their home where they'll access services, what devices they have access to, their self-assessed digital skills, and their comfort learning new technologies and online experiences.

The questions are below in the PDF.

Take what makes sense for you and your intake and assessment flow.

At the very least, add the first 3 Device Access and Communication Preference questions.

Get those points of data about your clients' device and communication preferences. Help yourself and your organization make technology decisions. Figure out the ideal hybrid program and service options and approaches for you and your clients.