25. Keep community support requests from getting lost

The brief

Plan how a fictional community garden handles membership, opening-hours and shared-equipment questions. Requests arrive through email, phone and in person, and people currently repeat their story when volunteers change. Design a workable process and explain how it behaves when demand exceeds capacity.

• The team receives about 90 requests each week. A fully handled request currently takes 12 minutes on average.
• Two coordinators together can spend 12 hours/week; volunteers can record a request but cannot promise a resolution.
• Many opening-hours questions repeat, but missing equipment and membership-record corrections need individual follow-up. No emergency or regulated advice is in scope.

Constraints

Weekly coordinator capacity≤ 12 staff-hours/week

Declare the coordinator-hours your plan requires and show how they fit the available time.

Honest response promise

Acknowledge requests without promising immediate resolution or treating acknowledgement as closure.

Continuity across shifts

A request must retain its owner or next responsible role, agreed next step and status across handoffs.

Minimal private records

Record only the contact and context needed for follow-up; keep personal membership details off public lists.

What to cover

1. 01

   Intake and handoff

   Show a common path for the three channels, initial sorting, ownership, escalation and closure.

2. 02

   Capacity and demand choices

   Calculate the initial workload gap. Explain specific changes that could reduce work or limit the promise, with assumptions.

3. 03

   Two request stories

   Walk through a repeated opening-hours question and an unresolved missing-equipment question over a shift change.

4. 04

   Quality and adjustment

   Choose measures for waiting, unresolved work and helpful outcomes; define an intervention and a check against premature closure.

Worked designs

No worked design has been published for this brief yet. You can start an attempt and share your approach in the discussion.

Review rubric

AI feedback uses these criteria. Scores are practice feedback.