Enquiries ‘a day in the life’ blog

“Hello, this is ACECQA Enquiries. Can I begin with your name and state or territory, please?”

This month ACECQA turns the spotlight on its own Enquiries team for a look at the day in the life of the people who are the frontline for your diverse questions about children’s education and care.

In a corner of ACECQA’s Sydney office, a variety of voices can be heard asking for names and states and how they can help you with your enquiry today.

The ACECQA Enquiries team brings together a group with a wealth of experience in the children’s education and care sector. Experience ranges from family day care and outside school hours care (OSHC) to a former service director and room leaders of long day care centres. Along with members who specialise in communications and customer service, this team is passionate about helping our sector, families and stakeholders.

“We pride ourselves on the range of knowledge and diversity of experience in the team,” said Mel, the team’s leader.

It is this knowledge and experience that allows the team to process an average of 95 enquiries a day, from Monday to Friday every week.

Samantha, who holds a Certificate III qualification and is currently completing a Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) and has been with the Enquiries team as a Customer Relations Officer since late last year, “thrives on the variety”.

“Every day is not only different but it’s also an opportunity to pass on the most up to date information to the sector,” said Samantha.

This is a common theme that runs through the team as they field the steady flow of questions and queries from calls to ACECQA’s 1300 number, email, online enquiries form and social media pages on both Facebook and Twitter.

While enquiries are open to all, the majority of calls and emails are from the children’s education and care sector, whose diverse questions range from excursions to ratios to qualifications to regulations and more.

As Samantha answers one of these calls, she begins with the familiar and friendly greeting and immediately assigns the enquiry a case number that is logged in a database. This particular call is from a new provider opening a service and Samantha steps the provider through the relevant sections of the website and required forms.

“This is also the perfect chance to refer providers and services to the National Quality Agenda IT System (NQA ITS), which helps manage applications to state and territory regulatory authorities online,” Samantha said.

Once she has passed on the relevant information, Samantha follows up with an email detailing the links to the required pages and resources on the ACECQA website and completes her case notes. The case is then closed. But a case is never truly closed because the details given by the caller and the assigned case number allow for a consistency of customer service if that person should need more assistance somewhere down the line.

If you have any questions or queries or need to contact us, you can find our details on the Contact Us page of the ACECQA website.