Public Invited to Weigh in on City Plans

Willoughby City Council is asking for feedback on draft strategies which seek to reinforce the Council's existing strong commitment to high-quality community engagement and customer experience.

The draft Community Engagement and Customer Experience Strategies were today placed on public exhibition.

The draft Community Engagement Strategy was developed after considering new information sources, including the 2021 Census results, a survey of nearly 100 community members, staff and Councillor feedback and lessons learned from recent engagement activity.

The draft strategy outlines how the Council will:

• Conduct early engagement on more complex projects, to understand community views so that these views can be incorporated into the design of these projects
• Consider how engagement should take place with Willoughby's unique community, including our proportionally high numbers of non-English speakers, time-poor working families, renters and people living in high density dwellings
• Harness the insights of Willoughby's volunteers and special interest groups including Progress Associations
• Improve the visibility of the Council's community engagement effort, including through introducing street engagement stalls
• Ensure that the community is engaged and informed across the full lifecycle of projects
• Monitor and evaluate the success or otherwise of individual engagement projects, and our overall engagement function.

The draft Community Engagement Strategy is intended to be implemented by June 2024, and is accompanied by a revised Community Engagement Policy.

Separately, a draft strategy has been developed for the Council's customer experience, which is defined as "the sum of all interactions our customers have with us via different channels …it is the feelings, emotions and perceptions the customers experience when they are having those interactions."

The draft Customer Experience Strategy has been based on customer feedback surveys and interviews, staff interviews and a range of research sources including community perception surveys and the latest Census data.

It provides a Customer Experience Framework, which outlines practical initiatives, which reflect how we will achieve our customer experience commitment and improve the overall customer experience.

The strategy outlines a series of actions which will be taken between now and April 2025, under the four following pillars:

• Listen to the voice of the customer
• Build a customer centric culture
• Optimise processes, information and services; and
• Improve technology and systems.

Willoughby Mayor Tanya Taylor encouraged feedback on both strategies.

"Good decisions happen when members of the community are involved," Mayor Taylor said. "As a Council, we are responding to increased expectations around customer service and the importance of involving our community in our decision making."

"Given this, and in response to what our community has asked, we are now keen to get feedback on our future direction in these two important areas."

Both strategies will be on exhibition until Sunday, 12 March at www.haveyoursaywilloughby.com.au

Community consultation workshops covering both strategies will be held at the locations below:

Register for the workshops at www.haveyoursaywilloughby.com.au