Jonny's Story

I worked at the neighbourhood centre as the Help Desk Team Leader for 11 years. It was the end of a glorious summer in 2012, I recently moved locally to Coin Street, finished volunteer work with the London Summer Olympics, and landed myself a very exciting role at a community centre.  

I remember everyone at work being so welcoming and genuinely supportive. Louise King, my line manager at the time, was an advocate for integration, working collaboratively with other teams and great communication. With the support of Louise and the organisation, we worked in raising the profile of the Help Desk to a high performing and customer service focus team.  

The Help Desk was known for being at the heart of the neighbourhood centre and for providing a vital communication portal. It became important to invest in the team and deliver a tailored training and development plan focusing on customer service and effective communication. 

My role was very engaging and social, I was not only managing the help desk team, but I felt very much part of the community. I got to know and make friends with local neighbours and commercial tenants. The team and I managed the reception desk, we logged maintenance requests, dealt with visitors and contractors, and supported the interface between Coin Street and the public.  

We were the proud ambassadors of the organisation’s vision statement and values. We took time to actively listen to all our visitors and neighbours and supported them with their many queries. From housing enquiries, family and community activities happening locally, local and facilities knowledge and even took many visitors around the area to showcase Coin Street. 

The team changed and evolved many times over the years, and I believe everyone got the best experience working at the Help Desk. We delivered customer service training, communication best practice training, problem solving skills, and got involved with local schools to support work experience training. As a team, we also got together a lot, team away days helped us work better together, Inset Days, Summer BBQs and Christmas gatherings also helped us bond. 

Over the years, we introduced several customer service surveys to measure and monitor all those wonderful interactions with our visitors. We wanted to be known as welcoming, warm, helpful and professional, which I think everyone that came to work at the Help Desk embodied. 

Coin Street supported me a lot and allowed me to develop my management skills. I got involved with the Inset day working group, social team and leadership team. I undertook many training opportunities as well including project management, leadership skills, health and safety and safeguarding. 

In 2015, inspired by a talented young lady who undertook a master’s degree while working at the Help Desk the previous year, I decided to enrol on a BSc Environmental Management. A part-time degree course with Birkbeck University of London. I’m very grateful to Coin Street for providing me with all the support needed for me to complete my training, a great place to work, flexible working hours and sometimes a quiet place where I could study. 

I can happily say that my experiences working at Coin Street have been amazing. Coin Street not only offered me employment but a whole community to be part of and to care for. I learnt so much and worked and met so many inspiring people.  

I have grown as a person, and I can say that I have had the best time working with the organisation. These days when I go for a job interview, and I keep talking about Coin Street, the first thing I get asked is, why did you leave such a wonderful community? I think to myself ‘so I can tell the story…’