8 December 2005 Press Release Revenue Department reduces queries to a trickle The City's Revenue Department has succeeded in reducing the number of customer queries it receives to a relative trickle compared to the flood of queries it had been receiving just a year ago. According to the Revenue General Manager: Customer Liaison Craig Ryan the main reason for the turnaround has been the ability of the department to identify business process problems and implement short-term solutions. "We have used the inside-out approach, focusing on operational efficiencies internally, and now we will focus on education and awareness programmes for customers (external) in the year ahead," says Ryan. The Department's figures clearly show the progress: Overall billing has significantly improved and evidence of this is the sharply decreasing customer queries outstanding which had peaked at more than 50 000 around March 2004 and dropped to below 7 000 by June 2005 which is less than 1% of the total customer base of the City; The number of queries logged per month declined from 53 152 (8.0% of the total customer base) in March 2004 to 6 881 (0.9% of the total customer base) in June 2005; The queries logged in the period from June to November have shown a slight increase to around 11 750 but 50% of these (5 875) were information requests not service requests (compared to the 53 152 in March 2004 where only about 10% were information requests). The total number of queries unresolved has fallen from 49 975 (7.2% of our customer base) in June 2004 to 11 497 (1.4% of our customer base) in June 2005; this has been maintained at around 0,7% of our customer base (5 500 unresolved queries monthly); The number of queries older than 90 days has fallen from 27 867 (3.9% of our total customer base) in September 2004 to 6 252 (0.8% of our total customer base) in June 2005; this has dropped further to 1 376 (the bulk of these queries are for refunds due, and the refunds backlog is largely due to the delays coming from the Deeds Office). Resolution rate of queries has been kept at a moving average of 110% over the past six months, meaning we are resolving more queries than we receive each month so addressing the backlog in queries that has accrued. Ryan says key to the short-term solutions for the turnaround in customer service that has been implemented has been the role played by the City's utility companies. "We have seen greatly improved turnaround times from our utility partners and we are automating many of the manual processes that were proving to be cumbersome. The single customer service value chain proposed by Programme Phakama will make this sustainable in the future," he says. "We have also paid attention to the customer's waiting experience. We have provided expected resolution time per query. For example, we are trying to solve billing queries before the next billing cycle run so that the changes reflect accurately on the customer's account; we issue clearance certificates within 24 hours of payment for the certificate." A scripting project, which will go live by January 2006, will assist all Customer Relations Agents (CRA) at the Call Centre in informing customers of expected resolution time. The new Revenue Customer Service Centre at Thuso House (61 Jorissen Street, Braamfontein) has also significantly contributed to the positive customer experience, says Ryan. "From January, we expect to have two new short-term initiatives underway. The first will be pro-actively dealing with refunds so that customers will be automatically refunded once the change of ownership reflects on our systems," he says. "We are also embarking on a process whereby where we have detected a problem with a customer's bill, we will send them a letter advising them that we are correcting their bill. They will receive feedback on their bill in their next billing cycle." "We are still concerned that there are customers whose queries we haven't resolved and we acknowledge that this is an area to work on. But we are pleased with the progress so far. We know that the value of a Customer Service Strategy is not realised overnight, but when it is entrenched in our culture it will go a long way to ensuring that customers will be delighted, not just satisfied, with our service!" Issued by: Mandy Jean Woods General Manager: Marketing and Communications Department of Revenue, City of Johannesburg Phone: 358-3420 Fax: 358-3423 Cell: 082 553 4211 (Please send sms if urgent) Email: mandyw@joburg.org.za