Full-fledged VOIP call centre in the pipeline

With the strain on Msukaligwa Local Municipality to provide service delivery and feedback to the public amidst financial woes, the Tribune spoke to Mr. Zwane, municipal spokesman, about issues faced by residents when reporting issues to the call centre. Complaints have been continuously flooding in regarding the innate lack of efficiency of the call centre. MLM has, however, previously stated that the call centre is not as it should be, and is rather a makeshift call centre to try and resolve complaints. MLM has, however, been working on implementing a full-fledged VOIP call centre, which will enable efficient logging, tracking and resolution of complaints. According to Mr. Zwane, the aim is to launch the call centre by 31 October 2020, but it should be noted that this a merely a projected date. The most notable complaints regarding the current makeshift call centre, are the lack of reference numbers or job tickets provided to complainants, as well as call centre operators more often than not failing to answer the telephone.

“Queries from community members can be logged or reported in a variety of ways, including verbally, in which community members can make a verbal expression after the deficient act or action with respect to the service. Community members can log / report issues by telephone, fax, a letter or e-mail to the call centre, and can also send a WhatsApp voice note, video or picture to municipal call centre numbers. Residents can also fill in complaint, suggestion and compliment form available in all municipal offices. Please note that your address, contact number, details of query and account number (for account and billing queries) must be included with the complaint submitted in the box.” Mr. Zwane said.

MLM is also working on an USSD code to submit complaints and queries, and the code will be made public as soon as the testing phase has been completed. “For each query, you MUST get a reference number. You may use the reference number to obtain progress feedback on outstanding queries. The municipal complaints management system will ensure that citizen complaints are resolved within set Service Level Agreement (SLA), and Municipal Service Charter.” Speaking to Mr. Zwane about the call centre operators who fail to answer calls, he stated the following: “Currently, the call centre agents report to the supervisor, who works between 7:30 to 16:15 on weekdays. With the envisaged call centre, there will be a shift supervisor, and all conversations will be recorded between the caller and the call centre agent. The municipality will be also be able to track dropped and missed call through the new call centre solution systems. We appeal to the community to bear with us while we are attending to the call centre infrastructure, and professionalizing it. The municipality is aware of the WhatsApp group and / or Telegram group that created to deal with municipal service delivery related queries.”