Ekurhuleni Call Centre beefed up

Even Ekurhuleni mayor Mondli Gungubele acknowledged that the biggest challenge “we are going to face is the operation of the centre”.

Speaking at its launch on May 2, in Bedfordview, he told the 250 call centre agents who were recently employed that they have been employed to the most sensitive side of the city, where non-performance and failure is unacceptable.”The worst you can do is be unable to give credible information when answering calls, and this must embarrass you,” said Gungubele.

The mayor put it to the new employees that working in the call centre is not in any way doing residents a favour.

“The people you will be dealing with are the ones paying your salaries and you are obliged to help them,” he said.

The call centre has been improved from 30 telephone lines to 100, 12 to 62 call takers per shift and the upgrading of technology.

The centre, which has thus far remained a thorny issue in the lives of many residents, received R7-million worth of upgrades.

Today, it has the capacity to accommodate 50 additional call centre agents per shift, with a total of 200 additional agents to enable it to operate a four-shift system.

Gungubele acknowledged the common complaints that are being directed at the centre, including calls going unanswered, callers kept on line for a long time, delays in the dispatching of trouble-shooting teams and call takers lacking information on the subject matter.

He hoped the poor quality service would come to an end and that the intervention would improve the service.

Gungubele said the metro has also introduced an Operations Rapid Intervention Team, which monitors and evaluates adherence to service delivery standards by various departments.

“The performance of the call centre operators and the departments is another intervention that we have brought in as we seek to get the best out of the call centre, so that it equals the expectations of our people,” he added.

“What I have just touched on so far are the short term deliverables that we identified as a city in our strategy to turn the call centre around.”

Gungubele said the metro also has medium term plans, which should be concluded in the next financial year, with long term interventions expected to be completed in the 2018/19 fiscal year.

“These interventions include the establishment of a CCTV Surveillance Centre, and a Transport Management Centre should be operational in 2016, with the Unified Command Centre, in Boksburg, being a long term project,” he explained.

“Previously, only 50 call centre operators could be employed on contract at a time, to run the operation at 12 people per shift.

“In some instances, we would have as few as eight call takers per shift, as employees took time off due to various pressing reasons – hardly enough to handle the demands of the community.”

He said compounding the problem was the size of the facility, which had only 30 telephone lines and, thus, could not handle all the public complaints, lack of training of the operators, and below standard technology.

The 250 permanent call operators cost the city R60,848,902-m per annum, and the launch and marketing cost of the entire project is standing at 2,5-m.

Goby, who attended the launch, said she is glad of the improvements and hoped the residents of Ekurhuleni now have a fully fledged call centre at their fingertips.