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The counter, the home visit, and the depot
A council meets its community in three places, and none of them is an office. This page is about the conversations that happen at a counter, on a doorstep and at a depot gate, and what it takes to walk in having already practised all three of them.
The counter
The person at the counter has already been on hold
By the time somebody reaches a human, the thing they are angry about is usually not the thing they came in for.
Not really about rates
A customer service officer can know the rates policy perfectly and still lose the exchange before it has properly begun, because what is standing at the counter is the accumulated frustration of being passed from person to person, arriving all at once.
PTR builds that exchange as a scene a whole team can run before their shift, with a person who reacts the way people actually do. Nobody has to learn it live on somebody who is already out of patience.
The doorstep
A doorstep in the rain, and nobody is expecting you
Community services staff work alone in other people's houses, and the read has to be right the first time.
Alone, reading the room
The door opens and everything useful arrives at once: how the person is standing, what is behind them in the hallway, whether the visit is welcome today even though it was welcome last month.
A classroom cannot rehearse that, because a classroom has colleagues in it. A headset can put one officer on one verandah, on their own, as many times as it takes for that opening moment to stop being a surprise.
The depot
First light at the depot, and something has to be said
Outdoor crews get their hardest conversations in the stretch before the trucks leave.
The pre-start at dawn
A leading hand has to raise something with the crew while everyone is standing in the cold waiting to get going. It is the least forgiving audience on the council payroll and the least rehearsed conversation on it.
The same scenarios run in a yard as run at a counter, on a device the crew can pass between them. Practice fits inside the time that already exists rather than asking for a training day nobody can release them for.
Central Coast Council
Built with the people who live it, not about them
The one council build already on this site was co-designed with the Council's Access and Inclusion Reference Group.
A beach, a shopping centre
Central Coast Council co-designed its experience with its own Access and Inclusion Reference Group, and set it in two places nobody would put in a training module: a beach and a shopping centre.
That is why it still runs. It was never a course the council had to keep justifying, it was a way of showing the community something about itself, and it has run across the community ever since.
Questions a council asks before it commits
Five that come up early, answered in the words they get asked in.
Do we need headsets?
No. A first build runs on one device that travels between the counter, the depot and a car, and the same scene also runs in a browser on the machines your staff already sign in to. The headset is the deepest version, not the entry price.
When would staff do this?
Before the doors open, after they close, or behind the counter while the queue is still empty. One exchange is short enough to fit in any of those, so nobody has to be rostered off the floor.
What does it cover?
The three places above, and what goes wrong in each: the counter that turns, the doorstep read wrong, and the pre-start nobody wants to run. Plus the disclosure at any of the three that nobody was ready for.
What do we end up holding?
A working scenario your own staff can run again, not a one-off training day. Central Coast Council's own experience, co-designed with its Access and Inclusion Reference Group and set at a beach and a shopping centre, is built into programmes that run again and again rather than a single launch event.
Can we start before the business case?
Central Coast Council developed its experience as part of an existing strategy to improve disability access and inclusion, co-designed with its own Access and Inclusion Reference Group. A first build can start the same way, from a strategy a council already has in place.
Who takes this forward
Written to be forwarded, because that is how a council decides
Almost nobody who first reads this will be the person who signs it, and that is the normal way round. State and federal agencies have a page of their own.
You probably route it
A Director Community Services or Corporate and Community Services reads this, recognises the counter or the doorstep, and sends it to the manager who owns that team. That step is the one this page is built for.
A manager and a coordinator scope it
One team, one conversation, and the coordinator who runs the roster works out where the practice sits. A first build is deliberately small, because a small one can start inside this financial year.
The council signs the write-up
Whatever comes out of it is reported by the council, about the council's own staff, in the council's own words. That is the document that makes the second conversation easier than the first one was, because it is already written in your voice.
It names the team, the conversation they practised and what they asked for next, and it is short enough for a councillor to read between agenda items. Central Coast Council's was built inside its own access and inclusion strategy, and it is still running.
