Managing a local government team has always been a balancing act, but recent data suggests the scales are tipping.
Between staff working overtime to keep up with demand and resident satisfaction hitting new lows, the business as usual approach to service requests is being pushed to its limit.
In this edition of the Scoop, we are looking at how to master high-volume workload management by removing the friction that slows your team down.
We’re focused on helping you Solve faster without the burnout.
In this edition of the Scoop we’ll explore:
○ How mastering your workload protects your staff from burnout while rebuilding community trust
○ How the City of Melbourne streamlined high-volume graffiti reporting
○ The next evolution of workflow management
○ How to reduce follow-ups by onboarding your residents at your next event
Bridging the gap between staff capacity and resident satisfaction
Local government is facing a dual challenge.
On one hand, 67% of local government Engineers are working excess hours to manage high-volume workloads, with many feeling unspoken pressure to stay contactable after hours and it’s reasonable to assume their counterparts in other service areas are having a similar experience. On the other, resident satisfaction is declining, with the 2025 Victorian Community Satisfaction Survey showing a steady slip in performance ratings since 2021 and 34% of residents now rating council performance as poor.
The survey highlights that these perceptions are heavily dictated by how efficiently and quickly individual service requests, like graffiti or road maintenance, are perceived to be handled. When the response or resolution of these visible service requests is delayed, resident satisfaction stalls alongside them.
It is clear that the ability to handle these requests quickly is a significant factor in rebuilding resident satisfaction. This doesn’t necessarily mean filling more potholes, cleaning more graffiti, or cutting more grass - it means managing the request with faster responses and more transparency.
Mastering high-volume workloads ensures these requests are handled faster, relieving the pressure on your team and stopping the slide in resident perception.
How the City of Melbourne mastered high-volume graffiti reporting
Managing high-volume issues like graffiti often comes with a heavy administrative load.
Before moving to a fully integrated digital workflow, the City of Melbourne’s legacy web forms had created a complexity trap. This shifted the burden of manually entering information onto the resident to ensure the right contractor could be assigned.
By shifting to an automated Snap Send Solve integration, the City replaced this manual hurdle with a high-speed pipeline. With 98% of reports arriving with photos, the reporting process simplified, and precise GPS metadata taken from the photo the vast majority of the time, the team can trust the high-quality reports and send jobs straight to the field.
This streamlined approach has effectively halved their response times, ensuring that high-priority issues are addressed faster than ever. By removing the friction between a resident spotting an issue and a contractor’s action, the City of Melbourne has proven that smarter data is the key to mastering high-volume workloads and maintaining a cleaner city.
"It's an instant process... effectively, we've removed manual effort to get the report from the customer to the contractor who's going to actually go out and clean it." - Gavin Josef, Manager of Customer Contact Operations at the City of Melbourne.
The next evolution of your workflow
For over a decade, we have perfected how information moves from your community to your desk.
But we know that receiving a report is only half the story. If that report stalls before reaching the field, it creates a backlog of status-update inquiries for your team.
To truly master high-volume workloads, that data needs to move just as fast out to the field.
Join our exclusive product unveiling
Be the first to experience the next chapter of our platform and hear from Burnie City Council on how this evolution has already transformed their workflows.
Tuesday, 19th of May 2026 at 1 pm AEST
Mastering your workload through community connection
The most effective way to manage a high volume of reports is to ensure they are high-quality from the start. We recently saw the City of Perth out in the field, using a community event to show residents how easy it is to report issues on the spot.
By engaging directly with the public, the City of Perth team signed up new users to the app and demonstrated how to submit high-quality reports. This proactive approach ensures the data reaching your desk is accurate and actionable from the very first Snap, reducing the need for follow-up.
Bring Snap Send Solve to your next event
Empowering your community to use Snap Send Solve is a powerful way to streamline your incoming reports. Our printable assets are designed to help you onboard residents at community events, ensuring every Snap comes with the photos and GPS data your team relies on.
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