News from the SA water sector

Abstract

The City of Cape Town has launched an SMS service that allows members of the public to report problems or raise queries relating to municipal water and sanitation services. The City reports that its call centre currently receives 30 000 to 40 000 customer calls per month. By rather sending an SMS, residents can report faults or ask questions without having to go through the call centre, which will save them time, reduce call centre congestion, and shorten queuing time for operators. All that is required in the SMS is the customer’s name, Erf number and/or account number, street address and a brief description of the fault. Cape Town’s technical operations centre will then log the complaint for remedial action and respond to the sender with a reference number. The messages are received by the municipality in the form of an e-mail, which is then logged on the standard notification system, and dispatched to the relevant operational response team for action. An SMS of no longer than 160 characters can be sent to 31373. SMS’s cost 80c.

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