The newly upgraded Ekurhuleni Call Centre has been met with conflicting reviews by residents.
In September, Tembisan reported the DA’s PR Councillor for Phomolong, Clr Allan Sauls, said many poorer residents are unable to access this service because callers are required to pay for the calls they make to the call centre as the number is not a tall free number.
“The reality is that many community members rely on cellular phones to communicate. An example is the Phomolong community, who largely make use of cellular phones,” Clr Sauls said at the time.
Launched in May 2014, the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) executive mayor Clr Mondli Gungubele said the centre’s technology had been upgraded to tighten communication between the call agents, the point of service and the field agents in order to ensure that complaints were resolved speedily and that credible feedback was given to complainants.
Clr Sauls, said the upgrades have not resulted in the improvements promised by the municipality over a year later.
He said, “I am increasingly being approached by residents who have logged complaints with the call centre but have received no feedback, nor have their service delivery complaints been resolved.”
Clr Sauls said call centre operators also seldom provided updates or feedback to residents on the status of complaints.
“It is clear that the R7-million spent on upgrading the centre and the employment of more than 200 agents has done little to improve this service delivery hotline,” said Clr Sauls.
He said he will be submitting questions to the MMC for Corporate and Shared Services, Clr Queen Duba, regarding the call centre’s alleged failure to resolve the complaints it receives from residents and how the municipality plans to fix this problem.
