Presidential hotline

[Dave A]

Not happy with service delivery? Call the presidential hotline!

A presidential hotline -- as announced by President Jacob Zuma in his election campaign and State of the Nation Address -- will start operating on Monday, the presidency said.

"Public liaison officers in the Union Buildings call centre will start handling calls and responding to public inquiries from 9am tomorrow," the presidency said in a statement on Sunday.

"The next few weeks will be spent perfecting the service and ensuring that all technical and operating aspects work efficiently."

The toll-free hotline -- 17737 -- will be manned by 43 liaison staff in the presidency.

"They [the liaison staff] will have the responsibility of following up the public enquiries and complaints lodged, and ensure that all are attended to efficiently.
full story from M&G here

Hopefully this will make a difference, and not just be a pat-on-the-head PR service.

[twinscythe12332]

what would constitute an acceptable query though?

[Dave A]

Maybe something like struggling to get your ID document. I'd guess when you're struggling to get a response working through the "right" channels.

[tec0]

Tell you what when this becomes a reality I will give it a test and see. I have a list here that will scare the things under your bed!

[Dave A]

President Jacob Zuma's complaints hotline received 7 261 calls between 9am and noon -- or 40 calls a minute -- on its first day on Monday, his office said.

"We are experiencing high call volumes and are spending the day sorting out various glitches," Zuma's spokesperson Vusi Mona said in a statement.

"The hotline has received 7 261 calls from 9am to noon this morning [Monday]. This equates to about 2 420 an hour or 40 calls a minute."

The 40 call centre agents had been fielding the calls in all 11 official languages, spending between 15 and 20 minutes on a call.

The agents routed the complaints to the public liaison offices in the presidency, national departments and provinces, said Mona.

He said the call centre, with the toll-free number 17737, would spend the next few weeks ironing out teething problems, "with a view to having a fully functional service by the end of the month".
full story from M&G here

Pretty hot start, I think.

[twinscythe12332]

40 call centre agents, receiving 40 calls a minute but spending 15-20 minutes on each call... multi tasking much?

[Debbiedle]

Hectic, I assume by the time you call this line you have had enough and have a history as long as your arm to explain the story with...

[Dave A]

40 call centre agents, receiving 40 calls a minute but spending 15-20 minutes on each call... multi tasking much?

Yeah - that maths struck me too. But I guess they need to see what the call rate settles down to.

I'd think this is going to take a while to bed down into something really effective. For starters, for it to work there'll need to be a follow-up process. It's all very well shunting a caller onto the right contact who in theory now has to do the actual work of solving the problem. It's another thing checking that said contact has actually done the job.

Still, a good initiative that deserves support, I think. I really do hope it makes a difference.

[Marq]

At that rate you have a potential 6.6% chance of having your call answered in a day.
You are number 6,802 in the q and your call will be answered in approximately 45 hours. Please do not hang up as we value your call

Sounds like we need a call in service to complain about the service delivery already.

[Dave A]

Some stats:

He said the hotline on Tuesday received 11 959 calls from 6am to 1.30pm; 8 001 got through to the welcome message and made their choice of language, 3 958 did not get through.

Of the 8 001 calls that came through the welcome message and made language choice, 492 were answered (handled) by the agents, with the remaining 7 509 being abandoned due to high call volumes.

"There is also a high prank call and or drop-call rate, due to poor cellular connectivity, in the region of 50 to 60 percent."

Thirty-one agents were handling call logging and routing them to the public liaison structures across the country.
full story from IOL here

At least there were 492 people who got more attention than they could get before.

[tec0]

Make this system provincial and give it a bigger bugged. This IS a service we CAN actually USE!

[Dave A]

Well, I've finally got stuffed around enough on unpaid government bills to make the call.

The call got answered near immediately.
I have to give the person that answered the call 5/5 for professionalism, and in the exit survey I gave a score of 4/5 for how satisfied I was with the outcome. (In fairness, it would have taken the promise of payment received by the end of the day to have gotten a 5/5 out of me on that one at that point).

As the matter concerned was a provincial matter (and I'd already escalated as high as I could reach at provincial level), I got referred to a national department as the next step (they call it "following protocol"), but all details were taken, time was taken to fully understand the situation, and I was given a reference number so that if the national department doesn't respond appropriately, with any luck I can just go back and quote the reference number as a starting point.

All said, and given the nature of my problem, they were pretty thorough.
Quietly impressed. (So far at least).