Official · Business & community operations · intermediate
Keep community support requests from getting lost
Make ownership and honest response promises work with a limited weekly support budget.
The question
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.
What to cover
Show a common path for the three channels, initial sorting, ownership, escalation and closure.
Calculate the initial workload gap. Explain specific changes that could reduce work or limit the promise, with assumptions.
Walk through a repeated opening-hours question and an unresolved missing-equipment question over a shift change.
Choose measures for waiting, unresolved work and helpful outcomes; define an intervention and a check against premature closure.
How your practice is reviewed
- Durable operating ownership (30 points): Each channel leads to a clear status, accountable role and next step without losing the requester’s context.
- Honest capacity reasoning (30 points): Recognizes the 18-hour initial workload versus 12 available hours and supports choices with stated assumptions.
- Useful and private communication (20 points): Requesters receive realistic updates and personal details remain appropriately limited.
- Quality control under pressure (20 points): Measures and intervention distinguish real resolution from fast acknowledgement or premature closure.
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