eThekwini Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda.
- eThekwini Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda held his second lecture on customer service.
- The event comes amid a string of service delivery failures.
- Kaunda called on business and residents to work together, but the DA says the lecture is “laughable”.
Amid a plethora of crises plaguing eThekwini – ranging from beaches with swathes of brownish water on the eve of the festive season, dilapidated infrastructure, potholes, water woes, unattended contact centre calls, among other service delivery failures – Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda on Thursday sought to sell the City’s “customer service”.
Even he acknowledged the City’s glaring shortcomings when he spoke at the second “Mayoral Customer Services Lecture”, which he billed as seeking to “instil customer-centric culture within the municipality”.
By Kaunda’s own admission, there has also been a lot of complaints from the public about inefficient contact centres, with long call waiting times.
READ | eThekwini officials jet off to US to ‘boost’ city’s image, leaving behind service delivery woes
Kaunda’s lecture comes a few days after political leaders and officials jetted off to the US to sell the image of the city.
Kaunda said:
The need for this engagement was necessitated by our desire to improve customer care following ongoing complaints from our residents and business about the unsatisfactory customer service they receive. Therefore, it is our hope that as we look for solutions, we will be joined by all relevant stakeholders to ensure that we build a city of our dreams.
He said the lecture had emerged out of City political leaders’ “desire to improve customer care”, following complaints from residents and businesses “about the unsatisfactory customer service they receive”.
“Therefore, it is our hope that as we look for solutions, we will be joined by all relevant stakeholders to ensure that we build a city of our dreams,” Kaunda said.
“We want to underline the fact that as we face so many challenges, providing quality services to our residents requires a strong collaboration with all social partners including academia, business, civil society and government.”
He said City leaders were “acutely aware” that eThekwini had to improve customer care calls, and that it had to provide adequate tools of trade for employees, particularly the frontline staff, to perform their duties efficiently.
“Equally, we expect our employees to be courteous and treat our customers with respect in line with the Batho Pele principles. If we are to succeed in our endeavour to build a capable developmental state, we need this type of public service cadre – a highly ethical public servant with integrity and fully committed to serve.”
Kaunda appeared to have changed his tune from his previous comments, where he criticised City staff as lazy.
This time, he commended them for working hard.
He said:
Ladies and gentlemen, we are concerned that our residents who are our customers are not happy about the level of service they are receiving from the municipality. This is demonstrated by complaints and insults in various social media platforms. While some of these insults may be politically motivated, we must pause and reflect on how we can change the situation because many of the concerns are legitimate.
Kaunda added that as part of this “introspection”, the City had to commit to implementing radical changes in how it delivers services to the public.
The DA’s eThekwini deputy caucus leader, Billy Mzamo, said:
It is actually laughable that Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda sees himself as someone suitable to lecture people on customer services. eThekwini Municipality has for the longest period under the watch of Kaunda mistreated it’s customers, including businesses and ratepayers by allowing service delivery in the city to deteriorate to a state never seen before.
He said electricity, water, sanitation and refuse collection had collapsed under Kaunda and the ANC’s coalition partner, the EFF.
“There are unprecedented water and electricity outages because of the neglected and failing infrastructure. There are sewer spills on our river and beaches,” Mzamo said.
He added that the City’s customer fault-reporting channels had “completely collapsed”, leaving frustrated residents who were trying to report faults stranded.
Mzamo said the lecture was less about customer service than about how well the City was doing, “because he [Kaunda] lives in his own world and is out of touch with the difficulties faced by customers and residents”.
Earlier in the lecture, Kaunda said the recent launch of the new eThekwini mobile app, which he stressed had been downloaded more than 30 000 times, would assist in customers getting access to their bills and logging complaints.
He said the app was a major step forward for the City in embracing digital transformation.
“An average of 1 099 faults or queries are logged weekly,” he added.
“Apart from the mobile app, our customer care unit (Sizakala) is working jointly with trading services and revenue management to improve our customer service and experience through an integrated customer relations management system. This essentially means that customers will be able to log a fault at any Sizakala Centre. The system will be implemented in phases and by 2025 we will have fully integrated all the customer services processes.”
The mayor said the municipality had, earlier this year, approved the rationalisation of all service delivery contact centres, including electricity, water and sanitation, into the Sizakala Customer Service Unit by December this year.
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