Giving credit to the intervention at the council meeting in Germiston on September 25, Ekurhuleni mayor Mondli Gungubele said it has resulted in a massive leap in opinion and community satisfaction levels graph, according to the latest Gauteng City Region Observatory research results.
“Our people are becoming more and more satisfied and confident in our city,” said the mayor.
Gungubele said the improved call centre has also improved their communication with the community and, as a result, changed perceptions about the city and its levels of service delivery.
Gungubele shared the following recent statistics about the Call Centre:
- Waiting time has improved from more than 20 minutes to less than a minute;
- Abandonment rate of calls has improved from more than 80 per cent to less than 10 per cent.
- For the first time ever in the history of the call centre, the municipality achieved both call waiting time and abandonment rate targets;
- All customer service requests are logged on EMIS irrespective of the origin; and
- The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality call centre now handles in excess of 2 500 calls a day.
He said government work is essentially a public activity.
“We should continually challenge the paradigm that government work is a secret activity that goes public from time to time.
“Rather, the approach should always be how to manage the flow of information in the interest of Ekurhuleni.
“Communication, communication and more communication is the way,” said Gungubele, to loud cheers and applause from the ANC side of the chamber.
“If we do not communicate, the people are left in a state of uncertainty, which easily results in irrational decision making and behaviour – thus leading to avoidable service delivery protests.”
He said the customer relationship management is presently locked in discussions with labour, in an effort to increase the number of shifts at the call centre, to cater for shorter working hours, so that staff fatigue is minimised, to further improve on the quality of service.
”Despite all this,” said Gungubele, ”we are the first to acknowledge that there is still plenty of room for improvement.
“In this regard, the City is now in the process of establishing a direct, dedicated link for the call centre outside the existing bandwidth to enhance the facility’s response time.
”Our target is to complete this process within the next couple of weeks and, as we strive for quality service at all times, we continue to have regular training for our agents on both customer care and telephone etiquette.”
Gungubele told fellow councillors that the work of jacking up the call centre remains one of the main priorities of the municipality.
“It is a process we shall continue to pursue until we get right,” he said.
