A plan has been put in place, with deadlines to be met and performance to be monitored, to resolve ongoing billing concerns.

THE City has drafted a 19-month strategy to improve revenue collection and the accuracy of its billing system in an attempt to eradicate concerns in the sector. This was announced at a press briefing on Tuesday, 22 November at the Metro Centre in Braamfontein.

Gerald Dumas, Joburg’s chief operating officer of revenue, said the resolution of the City’s billings issues had been divided into phases, the first of which would focus on quick wins and customer experience; phase two would look at stabilising the billing system and the third phase would be devoted to maintenance and continuous improvement.

“The intention is to ensure pleasant customer and citizen’s experience,” said Dumas.

Trevor Fowler, the City manager, said the main objective of the 19-month “roadmap” was to enhance efficiency in dealing with billing issues and to improve response times.

The plan forecasts that by June 2013, all billing backlogs and queries will have been resolved. “We believe it represents a step change for Johannesburg and will result in an integrated system which clearly serves the needs of our citizens and meets the expectations of our customers, ratepayers and stakeholders.”

Fowler noted that the plan was a prompt response to deficiencies in the revenue and billing systems. Internal processes had signalled that the quality of meter reading should be improved, as should turnaround times on resolving queries.

Turnover rate of frontline staff was also not ideal and this affected service delivery negatively.

Fowler said a task team comprising Dumas as the overall project manager, the City’s group financial officer, the chief executives of Joburg Water, City Power and Pikitup; and the heads of departments of rates and valuations, and revenue management and customer relations management would monitor the implementation of the roadmap.

The team would report directly to Fowler, who would report to the mayor and his committee and then to the council, and would ensure that “customer centricity remains the guiding principle”. He said a project nerve centre would be established to implement the roadmap.

“Our objective is to clean up our billing and land information systems and significantly improve the quality of our customer relations,” Fowler said.

Dumas said the roadmap had identified 28 February 2012 as the first deadline to achieve accuracy of billing, query resolution and meter reading accuracy, and significant progress must have been made to resolve customer queries, including the resolution of clearances and change of ownership queries.

By that time, the City should have an improved customer interface underpinned by a set of implemented basic standards of service to which City officials would be held accountable; the backlog in property valuations would be cleared, and customer queries largely resolved, Dumas explained.

The next roadmap deadline was 30 June 2012, by which date customer data should be consistent with the reality on the ground, a comprehensive customer charter would have been published and implemented, and credit management would have been enhanced to be more customer responsive, which would improve the City’s capacity to monitor and recover debt.

“Customers will be provided with correct bills, queries will be resolved and arrangements will be made for the settlement of outstanding debts.”

He said the City’s IT infrastructure and hardware would be upgraded to help frontline staff deal with customer queries effectively, and customer data would be “continuously cleansed to enable correct billing and customer query resolution”.

“By the end of 2012, the progress made will already have resulted in significant upgrades to our IT systems and a much enhanced experience for customers who access City services.”
He said by 31 December 2012, customers would be provided with correct bills, queries would be resolved in line with the City’s service standards and arrangements would have been made for the settlement of outstanding debts not already settled.

By that deadline, the Joburg Call Centre should be able to provide a reliable service and service level agreements between the City and municipal-owned entities would be reviewed, amended and implemented, and performance monitored continuously, Dumas noted.

“By mid-2013, the final elements of our step change programme will be in place: the installation of new generation meters and technology to meet the needs of customers and the installation of remote metering systems throughout the city, the installation of bulk meters and capacitor banks at intake points and meters at all stations to reduce non-technical losses of electricity, and customers will have access to eservices and smart meters,” he explained.

The portfolio head of finance, Geoffrey Makhubo, said the City was committed to resolving billing and revenue issues and would not be as lax as it had been previously. He said officials would be held accountable should the plan be unsuccessful.

Source: www.joburg.org.za