By Ndaba Dlamini
IN response to a drop in callers and complaints that calls were not being serviced, Joburg Connect, the City's call centre, will establish a new division in early September in an effort to speed up the resolution of queries.
The main focus of the division, dubbed Track and Trace, "will be to track all calls logged into the centre's computer system and all calls that are not resolved within the agreed turn-around resolution times set and agreed upon with the City's service providers or UACs (the City's utilities, agencies and corporatised entities)," said Joburg Connect's head of communications, Kgamanyane Maphologela.
Track and Trace will liaise directly with the centre's call agent and then follow up with the relevant UACs until the calls are resolved. UACs include Pikitup, Joburg Water, City Power, Metrobus and the Metro Police.
The new division was created after the centre encountered problems caused by unresolved queries and complaints.
"Turn-around times - the agreed times set for resolving a query or complaint - were not being observed by the City's service providers. There were delays, complaints were not being serviced on time and some were not being serviced at all," Maphologela says.
However, in recent months the call centre increased its staff complement, and according to a statement from Joburg Connect, the changes had achieved "phenomenal results".
"The 'abandoned' rate for the call centre dropped from a high of 29 percent during January 2004 to 19 percent in April 2004 with an all-time low of 6,6 percent in recent weeks. Average answer time has been reduced to less than a minute," says the statement.
Joburg Connect has been in operation for almost three years and its two main departments, Customer Relations and Emergency Connect, have handled more than five million calls to date, 973 240 of which were between January to July this year. The present staff complement stands at 300 employees and the centre handled.
Customer Relations assists with queries relating to accounts, meter readings, faulty streetlights, traffic lights and burst water pipes, while Emergency Connect "should only be used in life threatening situations to summon ambulances, fire engines and the metro police", Maphologela says.
Explaining how the system works, Maphologela said call centre agents record the caller's personal details and the details of the query or complaint and issue the caller with a "call-back" reference number, which must always be quoted. The call agent sends the reference number detailing the query to the relevant City service provider via computer.
"The relevant service provider will open the logged call and change the status to acknowledge that the query has been received."
If, for example, a caller reports a burst water pipe, the relevant service provider will be Joburg Water. "After the burst water pipe has been repaired, Joburg Water will update on the computer system that the complaint has been resolved," added Maphologela.
A record of all developments leading up to the resolution is presented weekly to the centre manager "for further escalation and feedback at monthly service meetings between Joburg Connect and different service providers".
Track and Trace aims to intensify the checking of detail at all stages of the process. Says Maphologela: "We expect this move to reduce persistent repeat calls drastically and help call agents to provide detailed accurate information to customers on the status of their queries."
Customer Relations and Emergency Connect operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customer Relations can be contacted on 011 375 5555 and Emergency Connect on 011 375 5911.
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