‘Please hold’: Here’s which municipal call centres keep the public hanging the most

In some of the country’s major metros, calls to customer care lines go unanswered, while in others there are long waiting times, or calls get dropped without the issue being dealt with.

Worst offenders are the eThekwini municipality in KwaZulu-Natal and Mogale City in Gauteng.

The City of Ekurhuleni was the most difficult to reach, not only because their website had a number for every suburb, but also because none of the numbers worked.

In Durban’s case, none of the calls made to various numbers listed on the municipality’s website were answered. Multiple calls to Mogale customer centre were unanswered.

Testing, holding and dropping

We recently tested the response times. Just one call out of four was answered on the day – but there was nobody on the line, only people talking in the background and then the call dropped.

The three other attempts were answered by an answering service, voice prompts for the different departments and then the call dropped.

“Your call is important to us, please hold,” for more than three minutes, followed by the call disconnecting.

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The option to speak to an operator leads to: “Please leave a message.” The following day, though, Mogale’s call centre workers answered within two minutes.

A tie between Cape Town, Joburg and Tshwane

After extensive testing it was difficult to say which municipality had the best answering ratio between the City of Cape Town, Johannesburg and Tshwane.

Cape Town, which is DA-run and prides itself on being one of the most efficient municipalities, was quick to answer a call to the water department. We hung on for less than two minutes – but after 10 minutes, the connection terminated.

Mangaung call centre in Bloemfontein took over four minutes for an operator to answer, after repeated announcements and elevator music.

Contacting a local municipality customer care line in Gauteng was equally challenging. The City of Joburg was easier to reach and quicker to assist telephonically with complaints and queries than the City of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Mogale.

Different results on different days

On one day, operators answered and the next day there was voicemail. Most of the calls answered required a person to stay on the line for more than three minutes and listen to announcements, or elevator music, before speaking to an operator.

Surprisingly, the City of Joburg was the most helpful and operators answered every call within two to three minutes after a brief announcement by the city.

The number wasn’t hard to find on Google and the answering service was easy to use to reach the water and electricity departments. The operator sorted out the query in under five minutes.

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The City Water extension was quick to answer on a Monday but slow on a Tuesday, when the call was referred to a customer satisfaction survey after five minutes without speaking to an operator.

Minutes of waiting

When the City of Tshwane answered one of the two numbers listed on its website, it took between three and eight minutes for an operator to answer the call.

On the first attempt on a Friday to report a pothole, the operator answered swiftly. However, the water department wasn’t as efficient on Monday, and the call was dropped after eight minutes.

The following day, after a huge power outage in Tshwane, a call to the electricity department was answered after two minutes.

Dropped and unanswered calls

In Ekurhuleni, calls to Alberton customer care, Benoni customer care, Boksburg customer care, Brakpan customer care and Tembisa customer care get no answer, only voicemail.

A Google search delivers a new general number answered by an automated answering service, followed by voice prompts to the different departments that answered in two to three minutes.

While the operator was helpful with reporting potholes, the call dropped while holding for a reference number. Returning the call to get the same operator via voice prompts was impossible.

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