The City of Johannesburg's (COJ's) Revenue Step Change programme, to address incorrect and hugely inflated municipal bills and long-outstanding queries, is on course to clear the query backlog by 30 June.
During his budget speech for the city yesterday, member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for finance, Moloantoa Geoffrey Makhubo, said the programme has already yielded positive results.
“These results are not only witnessed by ourselves, but by many of our citizens. Louise Cooper, from Midrand, says in an e-mail addressed to our customer service officials: 'I am totally and utterly impressed with this attention and care taken for me, as a customer of the City of Joburg. I wish to convey my thanks to Jeff and to you for leading the team.' This positive sentiment reflects one of the focus areas of the Revenue Step Change programme of improving the customer experience and fulfilling our promise to the citizens.”
The MMC said the COJ resolved 83% of the query backlog as at 1 November 2011. “We are on course to clear the backlog by 30 June 2012. We have also increased the face-to-face engagements with our customers through our customer contact centres.”
New goals
The programme has also seen positive results with regards to the distribution and quality of statements, according to Makhubo. “Revenue challenges still remain, but we are working tirelessly to address them.”
He added that the COJ will, in June, be introducing a Customer Service Charter that will contain service standards of what Johannesburg residents can expect. For example, one target is that, from 1 July, all new queries will be resolved in 30 days.
“Service level agreements are in place to ensure that departments and entities are held accountable for non-resolution of queries among themselves.”
Thousands of complaints
In March, the Presidency said there were 8 000 complaints received by the Presidential Hotline over the ongoing billing crisis.
At the time, there were about 100 000 queries from the city's 1.3 million accountholders that related to billing issues. Of these, 66 000 dated back from the end of October, while 35 000 were “new” queries lodged since November, said Makhubo.
Last year, several frustrated residents complained to the National Consumer Council (NCC) about their issues, which were caused by post-implementation issues with project Phakama, a SAP implementation that moved disparate systems onto one platform.
The National Consumer Tribunal cancelled 45 compliance notices issued by the NCC to the COJ, over the protracted billing crisis, since it found that the commission did not follow the proper process and did not investigate the matter first, before issuing notices.
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