"We've got a great team and when we do the staff survey they always score well in the engagement.
"They have to be engaged, they can't not be. They have to be good listeners and want to help people.
"The big thing about customer service here is you treat people the way you want to be treated."
Her teams, which comprise 16 and a half full-time employees but grows to about 28 people with casuals, have been trained to deal with various situations and help each person as much as they can.
"We try to help even if it's not necessarily council-related."
She said the council was improving in terms of understanding that "the customer is really important to us, and we shouldn't be as bureaucratic as we might have been in the past".
"We are council officers but we are here to serve the public.
"We can't always give people what they want, because regulations don't allow that, but we have to be able to explain that properly."
Jude, who started at the council on July 7, 2003, has also helped various customer service officers gain qualifications to enable them to move into working in other areas.
"I'm quite proud of the fact that a lot of the people who start in customer service go into other areas of council and can add quite a lot to their new teams."
And every three years when there is a local body election, Jude has been the electoral officer, starting from 2007.
Before working for the council Jude worked in the Electoral Enrolment Centre in Wellington, now the Electoral Commission, and before that had worked in Australia at the Victorian Electoral Commission.
"Hence the passion for doing electoral stuff."
She also had a passion for politics growing up.
"While I haven't been active in politics, this [electoral work] has been a way of working with that passion."
Her electoral officer role increased in intensity as well as pressure as local body election day loomed every three years, though Jude noted that is also dependent on the candidates.
"Some candidates can make it more stressful than others because you do have to make sure it is a level playing field."
She said she had loved being the electoral officer and hoped council would bring her back to do a few more [elections].
"Even just as a helper."
Jude, 67, won't be idle in retirement.
She is the secretary for Steam Inc, in Paekakariki, and does the bookings for them too.
Her passion for rail stems back to her childhood when her father worked on the railways.
Her uncle, who worked on the railways too, had a house in Paekakakriki and she has fond memories of watching trains, both steam and electric, from a fence in what is now the railway carpark.
And Jude expects there will be gardening at her daughter's 1200sqm section in Waikanae.
"I've got more than enough to keep me busy."
