Maritzburg municipal call centre gets technology upgrade

The new devices would change how the city’s residents log faults.

Picture: Bhekikhaya Mabaso/African News Agency (ANA)

Published Apr 20, 2021

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DURBAN - THE troubled Msunduzi Municipality’s call centre received a donation of new equipment to make it easy for staff to process customer complaints.

The call centre is a great source of frustration for residents of the provincial capital city, who often complain that they cannot get through to the call centre to report service delivery faults.

The municipality said it had received a systems upgrade and tablets which had been donated by Safe Community and Televoip on Monday morning.

While the donation was only publicly announced this week, it is understood that the equipment was delivered in February and was already being used by city staff.

Municipal spokesperson Thobeka Mafumbatha said the new devices would change how the city’s residents log faults, as instead of calling the call centre, they would be able to log faults via an app.

The city’s staff will follow on the logged faults on the tablets that have been provided.

“The city technicians will pick up the logged faults and attend to them. There were a number of complaints about the call centre, that agents were not picking up the calls or that there was no ’call waiting’,” said Mafumbatha.

Rory Jeudwine of Safe Community said they decided to get involved to assist and take part in the regeneration of the city.

He said users of the app would be able to gather all the information about the fault, including taking pictures, and log on to the municipality’s system; then all the call centre agent had to do was allocate a reference number to the fault.

“This will reduce the number of people calling in the call centre.”

Jeudwine said the app had been in use for some time and the workers and the residents were happy with it.

THE MERCURY

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