Sewage floods Bez Valley property

Mr Tony Jardim, a Bez Valley resident, was outraged after raw sewage flooded his property recently.

“This happens quite often. How come the council does not have covers over the manholes? The water and sewage is causing dampness on the outside of my house. Who is responsible to cover the costs? The call centre is inefficient. It took the council over four hours to attend to my problem.

“When I spoke to the supervisor of the crew at my house, he said if the call centre contacted him directly he and his team would have responded almost immediately,” said Mr Jardim.

He questioned Joburg Connect’s voice message which states calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes.

“Who follows up on these calls between the customer and the call centre? The people who answer these calls need training on customer service and empathy towards the customer. I spoke to three different people and all of them did not even try to understand my problem. I left a message for the team leader. He did not phone me back,” said Mr Jardim.

He added that after numerous attempts and money wasted on calls, he insisted on speaking to the team leader.

Mr Jardim said he had to shout at the man for him to understand his problem.

According to him the team leader eventually agreed to contact Joburg Water and ascertain where the team was.

“He kept to his word and informed me of the estimated time that the driver and crew would be at my house. Why could the other three people not do this at the beginning? Their service is shocking. They are only working to earn a salary. You can hear it in their voices. They could not be bothered,” said Mr Jardim.

Although receiving “inefficient service” from the call centre, Mr Jardim was thankful others were able to help him.

“I thank Clr Carlos da Rocha, the ward 66 councillor. He gave up his valuable family time on a Sunday to come to my house and he gave us a ‘’temporary solution’ to stop the sewage from rising and causing more damage. I also thank the driver and supervisor of the team who addressed the problem. He came back a second time as another blockage occurred after he left the house. When I phoned him the second time, although it was past his shift, he said he would come back. He even gave me the direct line for Joburg Water and said if I have another problem, I must phone them first,” he said.

He suggested the city train staff at the call centre on customer service. He also suggested the right equipment to clean the drains effectively be provided. “The current equipment is outdated and the crew needs high pressure hoses to work more efficiently. The current way is labour intense. Correct cleaning equipment to do mop up operations on the customer’s premises is needed. Failing to provide this will cause a health risk. Regular cleaning of the main sewerage system should also take place,” said Mr Jardim.

Mr Kgamanyane Maphologela, the director of customer communications at the City of Johannesburg, said the quality assurance team is constantly used to listen to voice recordings, call customers and call the call centre as a ghost call. “The reports on these incidents are used to correct process errors, product knowledge errors, unprofessional behaviour and compliment good service,” he said.

When asked what measures have been put in place to address concerns such as calls not being answered, the dropping of calls at the call centre and agents not being able to help residents as has been brought to the attention of the EXPRESS in the past, Mr Kgamanyane said, “In this case the complaint does not relate to not being answered, however, the call was logged correctly by the customer agent. A number of coaching and training process-related interventions have taken place. It is for this reason that the speed to answer has improved overall in the call centres. There are occasions where an outage leads to much higher volumes than resources can cope with. In this instance every effort is made to ensure communication is done through the media, voice messaging and the online logging is available for especially electricity matters. The behaviour towards clients needs to be professional at all times, even though we need to manage the process to the depot consistently. This situation is going to undergo further investigation so that we can understand the circumstances which the call agents reacted and whether further action is required.”

When asked if call centre agents can contact supervisors in the area immediately to resolve a problem such as sewage floating in someone’s property, Mr Kgamanyane said this process is not protocol.

“The call centre agents need to take incoming calls to ensure access to the call centre. Once the call is logged, it automatically routes to the relevant depot to deal with the matter. The depot region can assess if there are resources to attend to that matter as a priority. This is necessary in order to handle jobs in sequence according to type of emergency and first come bases. It is necessary to manage the process in this way as there are other clients who log reports earlier and it is not fair to ignore those clients who were first,” he said.

He added that in the case of a sewer leakage the turnaround time to address the problem is within 24 hours.The EXPRESS forwarded an enquiry to Ms Millicent Kabwe, from Joburg Water, on June 9 and requested comment by June 11. She said the query was still being investigated. At the time of going to print, no further comment had been provided.

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