Major system upgrade for water call centre

 

SIPHELELE BUTHELEZI

Plans to improve water supply and the status of water tankers in the City were outlined to the Executive Committee at a meeting on 15 April. Planned upgrades to the Water and Sanitation Contact Centre were also discussed. 

TO ENSURE a seamless customer experience and improved service delivery, the City’s Water and Sanitation Contact Centre will undergo a major revamp which will include the replacement of the contact centre system to upgrade and modernise it to deal with multiple challenges. The upgrade, which includes the integration of a WhatsApp channel with a faults man, will enable auto logging of faults and will provide updated feedback to customers. The upgrade will be implemented in the new financial year, 2025/26. Acting Deputy City Manager for Trading Services Ednick Msweli provided a report during the Executive Committee meeting on 15 April. The approved report will proceed to Full Council for final endorsement. It was explained that the delay in modernising the systems at the contact centre was due to budget constraints. Calls and quality issues are currently being dealt with as an operational item with the recent installation of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to deal with congestion issue. The report also highlighted calls and WhatsApp chat volumes with more than 80 000 calls received and 38 822 chats in March. Msweli said once upgrades are implemented, the aim is for the contact centre to answer calls within 20 seconds or 30 seconds at a maximum. In addition, the City will continue to explore a diversity of reporting channels to reduce demand on the calling option. The report further provided an update on the status of water supply across the City and the utilisation of water tankers. Water supply in the inner west, outer west and south regions is sitting at 90 percent with the north and central regions at 85 percent. The eThekwini Water and Sanitation Unit recognises that there are areas that continuously experience water outages and intermittent supply due to limited bulk water supply and system constraints. These areas are serviced with water tankers to provide relief. This includes Council owned tankers and additional hired tankers, as and when required. The City has added 98 water tankers to its fleet which was procured in December last year and delivered in phases. This brings the total number of Council owned tankers to 292. The tankers operate in two shifts from 6am to 2:30pm with the afternoon shift from 2pm to 10.30pm. It was also clarified that not all tankers are operational everyday due to break downs, repairs, or drivers being on leave. The City will continue to increase the fleet of Council-owned tankers.