Winton Shire Council: Doing more with less

Discover A Tiny Tourist Town’s Approach To Managing over 54,000km2

Winton, QLD is a thriving tourist town where eager entrepreneurs once journeyed across rugged Outback landscapes to find their fortune in the opal mines. It’s also the birthplace of the iconic Aussie bush ballad, Waltzing Matilda.

With tourism at the heart of their local economy, the residents of Winton take great pride in keeping their shared spaces and infrastructure in tip top shape. And it shows, with them winning the “Queensland Top Tiny Tourism Town” award three years in a row. 

And while this idyllic Outback town of 1,100 may seem small, the area the Winton Shire Council has to look after is immense—measuring 54,000 square kilometres. Managing and maintaining that area is no easy task for a small local government organisation of around 100 staff members. But thanks to Snap Send Solve, they’ve found a way to combine the power of community and technology and stretch their resources as wide as the land they look after.

Embracing the Snap.

"There are about 1,100 residents in Winton—not enough for a dedicated customer service team. But with Snap Send Solve, anybody can report an issue day or night without having to track down a phone number or email address. It's been a game-changer." - Brenton Hall, Acting Director of Works.

The traditional way of reporting community issues over the phone, through emails or online forms has always had its problems. Sometimes they were incomplete. Other times, inaccurate. Even worse, the time-consuming experience usually meant that although people cared, they wouldn’t report an issue. These perpetual resource-wasting reports whether they lack the nature of the issue or precise locations, along with the enormity of their Shire, made it essential for Winton to create greater efficiencies and do more with the resources at their disposal. That’s when they turned to tech.

In April of 2023, Snap Send Solve came to town. Delivering digital transformation right out of the box, our full customer service suite took less than two weeks to set up. Seeing the benefits almost instantly, the council started receiving reports with photos and precise locations, and the residents were able to send a report in less than 30 seconds. The council was quick to embrace this new way of doing things and preferred receiving requests over their existing, traditional customer service channels.

Now, processing community reports doesn’t need dedicated resources to triage and process requests with customers acting as an extension of the team. The works team reviews and allocates reports, with the Acting Director of Works, Brenton Hall, directly overseeing urgent or sensitive reports. 

"These reports are excellent - they alert us to issues we wouldn't have been aware of, but would've needed fixing anyway. It's about seeing the community as partners in maintaining our town."

Solving issues from the top down.

It didn’t take long for everyone to get on board.

In just under two years, over 95% of all requests received, come through the Snap Send Solve platform.

In fact, Snap Send Solve has become so embedded in how the community connects with the council, that they rarely receive calls or emails anymore.

Their secret? A commitment from the top down to treat every report as an opportunity. There is a clear directive: reports stay open until works are completely done, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

See before you Solve.

Over 93% of Snap Send Solve reports come with photos of the issue attached. That means the council can assess and prioritise what needs solving now and what can wait—without having to send someone out to investigate due to an incomplete or inaccurate report. And if it’s not the council’s problem to solve, the platform makes it seamless to send it to the right authority.

"A photo is king because you don't need to rely on an individual’s description or interpretation of the issues. You can just see and assess it for yourself. It's made a huge difference." - Brenton Hall, Acting Director of Works.

Providing that personal touch

With the tools to manage, close reports and follow up after the fact in just a few clicks, Snap Send Solve is helping the council connect with the community like never before.

"Customers can easily track the progress of their report through the app so they don't have to guess what's going on. It also makes it easy for us to follow up with a message via the app and provide an extra personal touch." - Brenton Hall, Acting Director of Works.

When closing off a report, the team goes beyond the standard response with personalised in-app messages that help them close the loop and improve their customer’s experience. It's now a core part of how Winton serves its community.

Leading the way

Mayor Cathy White is one of the platform’s biggest champions and has been Snapping things left and right—to do her bit, but also to help her community do theirs. It’s just one example of how those at the top are leading the way.

"If a community member brings something to my attention, I know that Snap Send Solve will get the issue to the right people to Solve it. I don't have to write an email, pick up the phone or worry about remembering the details. I just Snap and the app does the rest. It's brilliant!" - Kathy White, Mayor of Winton.

Big or small, there are benefits for all 

From the first Snap, our end-to-end solution exceeded everyone’s expectations. 

Not only did Snap Send Solve help boost their communication rating by 10%, it completely replaced time-consuming emails and calls—increasing their reports by 310%. All in just under two years.

With the increase in efficiencies, they’re now able to review reports 2 days faster and mark progress 4 days faster than other QLD councils (on average). 

And probably the most impressive stat of all is their 100% Solve rate—amongst the best in the country. It just goes to show how a little bit of tech can help everyone do their bit, even in a tiny tourist town in the middle of the Outback.

"What we've found in Winton is that you don't need dedicated teams or complex systems to deliver great service. With Snap Send Solve, we're actually more responsive than some bigger councils—because every report goes directly to the right person, and we can act on it straight away." - Brenton Hall, Acting Director of Works.

See what Snap Send Solve can do for your council.

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