City to offer additional services to improve customer experience.
The City of Johannesburg is looking at intensifying its efforts to improve customer experience for residents. According to a statement from the City, they will be providing additional service offerings in each of its seven regions. The additions will now allow residents to process and handle meter-reading input by customers (water and electricity); change of ownership; statement repository; due date updates; special meter- reading requests; acknowledgement of debt; logging of queries and general account enquiries at a category A (main) customer service centre, which every region has. Director for communications and stakeholder engagement Kgamanyane Maphologela explained that the City has taken further steps to demonstrate its commitment to improved customer service offering.
Ratepayers can now expect to see a visible display of the following at every category A customer service centre:
- Service charter
This will empower customers as they will be aware of service standards that the City pledged to provide its ratepayers, as well as the type of service they should expect to experience. - Query escalation process
This indicates how long it takes the City to resolve a query and provides alternative avenues ratepayers can explore should queries not be resolved to their satisfaction. Contact details of management are also contained should a matter require different levels of escalation. - Statement explained
This gives an explanation of every detail contained in the municipal bill to ensure customers get a clear sense of what to expect from their monthly bill. - Councillor help desk
Dedicated to councillors for all queries that have been escalated to them for intervention as public representatives.
Having successfully hosted open days in regions B, G and F which were each followed by extended operational hours in pursuit of resolving outstanding queries, the City is now rolling out the same to the remaining regions, being E, A, C and D respectively. Maphologela expressed, “Hosting a series of regionalised open days is a precursor to decentralised customer service which is aimed at improving the experience of ratepayers when interacting with the City across all regions.”
