journey map
Someone starts to want a pet. Checking the lease, talking to the household, working out what it costs. All of this is our assumption. No adopter has described it to us yet.
Searching online, comparing RSPCA with breeders, other shelters, Gumtree and PetRescue.
Reading profiles, filtering, saving favourites, checking back for new arrivals.
One animal stands out. Reading the profile again, checking the cost, working out whether it could actually work.
Looking the centre up, checking the hours and the drive, reading what other people say, and working out when to go.
Turning in off the road, parking, and working out which way the building faces.
Through the doors into a space shared with retail, the vet, lost and found, surrenders and reclaims.
Finding the way down, and arriving in the room where the animals are.
Walking the pens and the cat rooms, reading what is on each door, waiting for a turn.
The meet and greet, questions to staff, sometimes bringing family or a resident dog. Then yes, no, or come back later.
Suitability questions, the form, and a yes or a no. Sometimes filled in over the phone.
Fee, microchip transfer, registration. Then the talk about health, behaviour and feeding, plus the kit.
The car trip, the first night, the first meal, the resident pets, the kids. Then toileting, sleep, hiding and early worries.
Two weeks pass. The adopter can still bring the animal back, and nothing at all is sent during this period.
Routines form and the animal’s real personality shows up. It may not match the profile. A problem appears and they go looking.
Follow up emails, plus whatever else lands from fundraising, retail, insurance and events. By day 90 the animal is either family, or the relationship is strained.
This band is the adopting family’s point of view, at that moment in the journey. It is currently a hypothesis, drawn from one adopter account and from what staff expect on their behalf, and it is here to be replaced by what adopters actually tell us. The saying lane is deliberately almost empty, because we have only two adopter sentences so far.
Hypothesis only, and four lines rather than three. The people who came only to look are on it for the part of the journey they share, because staff say they are most of the room. Everyone peaks somewhere different, and at the pens the visitors are at their happiest while the animals and the team are at their worst.
Guardrails: the rules that apply everywhere
Each one names the lane it constrains and where it bites hardest. Stage specific constraints are not repeated here, they sit in the cell they affect.
Staff say people turn up with a fixed expectation and a purpose, and that the moment to shape it has already passed. The questions are on a page most people will never open.
Google’s summary sets out the process before anyone reaches us, including that most organisations will want proof your home is safe and suitable. So people arrive already expecting to be assessed.
It happens entirely outside the organisation, and nothing records that it happened at all.
The public believe RSPCA covers every animal, including wildlife and livestock. Staff say that does not match the services, and that the gap has cost trust.
With two shelters remaining, people outside Melbourne are told to travel to Burwood East or Pearcedale. Inspectors are still present, which makes the gap harder to explain.
Searching adopt a pet Melbourne returns paid results for other organisations. RSPCA is not in that block, so the biggest name in the state is not the first door on the busiest query.
If the first conversation happens in a shop, a change at the front desk never reaches it.
The brief says friction starts here, and it is the part of the journey least talked about inside the organisation.
Inconsistent descriptions are named in the brief as a known problem, and staff still describe them as very brief. Either that predates the redesign, or the quality varies animal by animal.
The site says the process is designed to match you with the right pet, the first time. Nothing we have seen in the centre systematically does that.
Staff describe mostly large breed dogs who need to be the only pet, while people arrive with children, smaller yards and other animals.
Raised at the roundtable. We need to understand the term before we go near it.
Somebody can decide on an animal and then hear nothing until they walk in, by which time it may already be gone.
The listing tells people to arrive early because popular animals go quickly, to expect a wait when meeting pets, and that they may be given a buzzer. All true, and none of it written by RSPCA.
Op shops, the vet clinic, Peninsula and Camberwell all come back first. Somebody looking for the adoption centre has to know which one they want.
A review describes two hours of waiting and overhearing the interview of the people who got the dog. What staff told us happens inside is being read by people before they arrive.
Customers parking only at the road, then staff only painted across the asphalt. Practical signs, and they are the first thing a nervous visitor reads.
The pylon lists barkery cafe, shop, grooming, adoption, vet clinic and pet training. Somebody coming to adopt has to find themselves in a list of six.
Same staff, same room, same process. On a quiet Tuesday the welcome was warm and the conversation was unhurried. A Saturday may be a different service altogether.
The car park is signposted. Inside there are none, and wayfinding is two staff pointing, with a storage desk beside them and a shut cafe behind.
Adopters, surrenders, reclaims, retail, vet and people just visiting all arrive at the same desk with competing emotions, in a space staff describe as loud and echoey.
People holding a puck have no seat and no destination, so they stand near whoever is working. What that does to the conversations is untested.
Sponsor material and stored dog food line the wall of the space where people decide whether to take an animal home.
People holding a puck have no seat and no destination, so they stand near whoever is working. What that does to the conversations is untested.
Sponsor material and stored dog food line the wall of the space where people decide whether to take an animal home.
Staff say the great majority come only to look. They are the audience for everything RSPCA wants to teach people, and nothing here is built for them.
Staff describe children being lifted over barriers, hands through gaps, and animals being grabbed. Perspex went into one cat room after children chased cats up the walls. This is why doors get locked.
Shelter Buddy can show which animal is in which pen and for how long. It is switched on at Peninsula and not at Burwood East.
Information Services have seen them working at another RSPCA. They say nobody here has asked for them, which is why the work has never started.
The tone is caution at the moment people are most curious. Staff also say signs and barriers do not stop anyone, and that conditions of entry go unread.
Where access is not limited, staff describe animals vomiting, salivating and wide eyed by the end of a busy weekend. Where access has been limited, incidents fell.
Signs tell people not to put their hands in, next to openings that invite it. Three sources now describe the same behaviour in this space.
The adoption we watched had started the day before. The family met the cat, did some of the paperwork, went home to think, and came back. The map draws one visit. The real thing loops, and nothing records that it did.
Nothing is written down for how the matching conversation should go. The supervisor role models her own approach and has named the gap herself.
First in, first served, in a room where everyone can hear. Staff are challenged by people who overheard and think they were the better home. Whether adopters feel it as unfair is something only adopters can tell us.
Staff describe people changing their answers within a single conversation to get the animal they came for. That is a design problem rather than a character problem.
Their own photography shows this conversation seated, calm and unhurried. The site visit found it happening in the open beside the kennels, with nowhere quiet to think.
Staff protect animals because they see the worst of people. At the front door it lands differently.
Nothing systematically helps a person work out which animal suits their life.
Staff describe people changing their answers within a single conversation to get the animal they came for. That is a design problem rather than a character problem.
There is no record of why an application was declined or withdrawn, so the people we turn away are invisible to us.
A link between the payment system and Shelter Buddy meant details were entered once. A new payment system started about a month ago and cannot be linked, because of security limits in the product. Information Services describe it as a step backwards and say the supplier is due to address it next year.
The name field arrives in fundraising as staff typed it, including bonded pairs with brackets. It is too messy to use in emails, so nothing downstream can be personalised.
Fundraising see the handover as the natural place to say it, and it is not said.
Staff used to open the record on a phone and talk with people in the cat room or the yards. Two step login made it too slow, so everyone went back to the desks in the loud office.
We watched it done well. An officer opened the record and talked the adopter through the cat getting the zoomies at night, and what to do about it. It happened only because the family came back on a quiet day. The day before it was skipped for time, and nothing records that it was skipped.
Once the adoption completes, the record moves on and the team who built the relationship cannot see it.
No time, nowhere in the system to put it, and not part of anyone’s role. Three levers, all jammed.
The sheets are old and some of the guidance is wrong. One told people to hold a dog upside down. A good handbook existed on paper and was lost when things went digital.
This is also when animals are most likely to come back.
Everything known about it so far comes from the organisation, not from a family living it.
The window built to let people change their mind is also the window when confidence is lowest, and it is deliberately silent.
Inside two weeks it is a return. After that, fundraising is not sure the organisation would know.
Staff downstairs knew a cat was sick. Fundraising did not, and the regular giving call went ahead. The same gap exists when an animal dies at RSPCA’s own clinic.
The team was one person and she has resigned. Queries sit in a shared inbox and get answered when somebody has time.
Behaviour support, vet care and education are all there. None of it is offered at the moment it is needed.
Personality shows up in weeks two to six, after the expectations were set.
Every adoption creates a Salesforce record holding the person and the animal, and adopters are treated as having a high appetite for giving back, so campaigns are tailored to them. No equivalent flow to anybody offering support was described.
We had this as a quiet period. It is not. A sponsor sequence, a soft first email, a phone call, campaign emails and a monthly newsletter run to about eighteen months. What is missing is not contact, it is a single message about the animal.
People give time, care, money and a home. What comes back is mostly a request for money.
Any new message has to earn its place, so this is about relevance and timing rather than volume.
The adoption process page asks people to think about time, cost, vet fees, other pets, children and space. These are the same questions staff end up asking at the counter.
Find your furrever friend today, above filters that work. The tone online is nothing like the caution on the signs in the centre.
Staff enter an animal once in Shelter Buddy and it appears on the RSPCA site, Adopt a Pet and PetRescue. Information Services call Shelter Buddy the most robust system they run.
A profile now describes temperament, what the animal needs and what it would prefer, in plain words. Cost and what it includes sit up front, so a family can picture the animal before they arrive.
The Burwood East listing sits at 4.2 stars across two thousand reviews, sorted and topic tagged. It is free, it is current, and it is the closest thing to an experience measure RSPCA already has.
The handouts include foster information and a list of other places to look. Turning somebody away with somewhere else to go is a generous thing to do, and it is already happening.
A good conversation, unhurried, and a flexible approach when the adopter turned up without photo ID. On a quiet weekday it felt like being helped, not assessed.
About 4,000 adopters this year, of whom more than 800 converted to donors. Around $280,000 last financial year, 95 confirmed gifts in wills, and more than $5 million since 2012. Figures read off a dashboard during the interview.
People who adopt an RSPCA animal from a pet shop sign the same form and receive the same sequence.
Tensions that run through the whole journey
These are not problems with a right answer. Each one is a choice somebody has to make, and naming them is how they stop being made by accident.
As someone thinking about a pet, I want to understand what it really takes, so that I choose well rather than hopefully.
As someone comparing my options, I want RSPCA to feel like the knowledgeable choice, so that I trust who I am dealing with.
As someone browsing, I want profiles that tell me what living with this animal is like, so that I can picture it honestly.
As someone who has chosen an animal, I want to know they are still available and what to do next, so that I do not arrive too late.
As someone planning a visit, I want RSPCA to tell me what to expect before I set out, so that the wait and the queue are not a surprise.
As someone arriving, I want to know straight away that I am in the right place and where to go, so that I walk in ready rather than lost.
As a visitor, I want to be welcomed and guided, so that I can concentrate on the animals rather than on the building.
As someone waiting, I want somewhere to wait and a sense of what happens next, so that I am not standing over the people I need help from.
As a visitor, I want to understand what I can do here and who to ask, so that I do not make things harder for the animals.
As someone deciding, I want help finding the animal that suits my life, so that we both start well.
As someone applying, I want to be assessed on what I can actually offer, so that I do not feel I have to say the right thing.
As a new owner, I want to leave knowing this animal’s story and quirks, so that I can care for them properly from day one.
As a new owner in week one, I want to know what normal looks like, so that I do not panic or give up.
As a new owner in the first fortnight, I want to know that somebody is there if this is not working, so that returning is a considered decision rather than a lonely one.
As an owner with a problem, I want one obvious place to turn, so that I do not solve it alone or badly.
As a new owner, I want contact that helps me before it asks anything of me, so that I want to stay close to RSPCA.
How we will sequence these, once we know enough
No order is set yet. Sequence is decided in the prioritisation workshop in phase three, using three filters read together. Each card carries its current reading, and every one of them can change.