The War-room on Service Delivery that was introduced by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality to improve responsiveness to customer complaints has recorded impressive performance, hardly two moths after the initiative was launched.
Of the 7720 complaints lodged with the call centre since its launch on 11 May 2011 to date, a staggering 4444 have been finalized, underscoring the potential success of this integrated approach to customer service. The cases resolved cut across a number of services rendered by the municipality, including illegal dumpling, refuse collection, water and sanitation and human settlements, among others.
The War-room on Service Delivery initiative was introduced as, effectively, an expansion of the highly successful and much acclaimed Joint Operation Centre run by the Municipality during the 2010 FIFA World Cup which was introduced May last year.
During the World Cup, residents and visitors had a single number to call for all municipal and government services in line with international best-practise. Backed by Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras monitoring key nodes, the centre improved the ability of the Municipality, Emergency Medical Services and the South African Police Services to respond proactively or react speedily to service delivery complaints, emergencies and crime, among others.
The project is also one of the apex projects that Executive Mayor, Cllr. Zanoxolo Wayile undertook to introduce when he came into office in 2009.
“I am pleased with the success of the service delivery war room because it underscores our commitment to run an administration that is responsive to the needs of residents and businesses in Nelson Mandela Bay.”
“With such an impressive record in just over one month, our intention is to ensure continuous improvement going forward,” added Mayor Wayile.
The introduction of the service delivery war room signaled the first step of a potential migration towards a unified approach to customer care within the municipality. “We are laying the foundations for an even bigger institutional initiative that will improve community and customer satisfaction levels greatly,” explained Mayor Wayile at the time the call centre was launched.
The 080 020 5050 number was first introduced for lodging water related complaints. Last month, it has been open for all other service delivery related aspects such as large scale power outages and road-related enquiries as well as community-watch type of calls regarding cable theft and illegal dumping.
If the number of customer complaints is anything to go by, the centre is poised to see tremendous growth in the municipality’s customer satisfaction level ratings.
NMB Communications
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I would say that it would have been impressive if 90% had been resolved, but only 58% and it has already been going for two months. One can only imagine the backlog or the carry over of the calls going forward with 3276 calls being carried over – oh my gosh, NO PRESSURE!
At the moment I am the lucky recipient of many of these good news press releases from the Metro. One has to view them in light of the final council meeting next week which will call for acceptance of the budget and tariff increases.