Customer Care

Vision and Objectives of Department

• This section is responsible for managing and co-ordinating the 24-Hour Emergency and Customer Call Centre within the Langeberg Municipality.
• The aim is to improve on customer loyalty and customer satisfaction within the Langeberg Municipality by placing all people at the centre of development.
• Another initiative is to drive and underpin the development and maintaining of a Customer Care and Complaints Management System which form part of the corporate governance principles and The Batho Pele White Paper for transforming Public Service Delivery.
• The department is responsible for;

1. To render a 24 Hour enquiry and complaints service to the community of the Langeberg Municipality in terms of an information desk through the Customer Care Management (CCM) System.
2. To manage stakeholder relations for effective and smooth service delivery.

• Performance Highlights:
• Priorities: 2009/2010

1. To highlight and strengthen the importance of operating a customer care information desk in all five towns within the Langeberg Municipal area. This initiative and type of services within the municipality will assist each department in speeding up and improving on service delivery on a continuous basis.
2. To ensure smooth and effective functioning at the 24-Hour Call Centre.
3. To ensure that effective and efficient client handling systems are in place.
4. To ensure effective record keeping of complaints.
5. The role out and managing of the Batho Pele program

• Future Plans

1. In the next financial year the department will focus on the following areas:
2. Implementing of new complaint management system. GIS (Geographical Information System) This system are developed to captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that are linked to a specific location.

• Performance 2009/2010

1. During October 2009 the four permanent call centre operators successfully undergo a three-week period training session at various departments such as Civil Engineering, Electrical and Environmental Services within the municipality of Langeberg. The initiative of this exercise was to be exposed and to have a better understanding on how departments operates in order for them to handle complaints more efficient and effectively. This opportunity also gave them more insight and contributes to learn more about the municipality and its’ departmental functions.

24-HOUR EMERGENCY AND CUSTOMER CALL CENTRE
The Call Centre has now been in operation for more than two years with four permanent Call Centre Operators and one temporary operator. They are operating on a 24-hour shift system and is located at the Fire Department. To make the client services function more user friendly, the centre deals with general enquiries and complaints, essentially during after-hours, which fall between 16h30 and 08h00 on public holidays and over weekends. The functioning of the Call Centre is gaining momentum as a result of marketing and very good feedback from the public. We are still making a great contribution to community liaison in building a good image and to ensure client satisfaction within the Municipality of Langeberg.
The 24 hour Call Centre number 0860 88 11 11 is now permanently printed on our monthly municipal accounts. By phoning this number, it will connect the client to a trained operator who will alert the emergency services or assists with a query or complaint. In the event of fire or any other emergency, including motor vehicle accidents, the call centre operator will be able to immediately assist the client by alerting the fire department and/or any other services required.
When receiving complaints or general enquiries, the operator electronically log the caller’s details as well as the nature of the query or complaint on the municipal computer system. The relevant department is then informed immediately. Members of the public can request a customer complaint number to be able to follow up on the progress of a specific complaint. This is another initiative of the Municipality to serve and assist the community.

BATHO PELE AT LANGEBERG MUNICIPALITY
The Batho Pele program is an initiative to get public servants to be service orientated, to strive for excellence in service delivery and to commit themselves to continuous service delivery improvements in their various departments. It is a simple and transparent mechanism, which will allow citizens to hold public servants accountable for the level of services they deliver.
Our municipality appointed their own Batho Pele co-ordinator who is responsible for cascading the Batho Pele Principles to all staff members at all levels within the Municipality as part of an ongoing revitalisation of the campaign to inculcate the Batho Pele culture among the public servants and improve service delivery in our municipal area.
All newly appointed officials of the municipality are inducted on the Batho Pele Principles.
The call centre operators and customer care officials strive to go beyond their call of duty and still promote the slogan: “Together beating the drum for service delivery”.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY
To demonstrate the municipality’s commitment to service excellence and quality service delivery, our municipality conducted an External Customer Satisfaction Survey as well as an internal staff moral survey. This project was advertised based on a tender process and was performed by an external consultant. It was expected from the external consultant to conduct two satisfaction surveys, which include and external survey and a staff morale survey.