As one may walk into the doors of any Department or even directing a phone call to that particular Department, the one thing that pops up in everyone’s mind is “how well will I be assisted?”. In making sure that its customers are satisfied, the Eastern Cape Department of Education (ECDoE) has come up with a strategy that will provide an effective and efficient customer services to all stakeholders.

According to Khaya Nakani from Customer Care office, the current primary approach that is in place is that of a management approach of the Presidential Hotline for queries. “When our customers call us about their complaints that usually have to do with school infrastructure, school nutrition, scholar transport and pension payments just to name a few, this system assists in strengthening inter-governmental relations within the Department”. Said Nakani. He went on to say that customer care is looking at operating in one office which will have each critical section of the Department represented so as to speed up the process of responding to queries.

“Our progress has improved a lot from the past years when it comes to the Presidential hotline complaints, we were sitting at 25% and currently we are at 92.7% in solving complaints in our districts across the Province” explained Nakani. He added that the section normally takes 7 to 21 working days to respond using the primary approach.

A traditional approach is also a system in place at the Department to deal with complaints and queries for walk-in customers. “This is when customers visit the Department in person to lodge their complaints and about 80% of our customers are mostly comfortable with this approach” added Nakani. In most cases these are the stakeholders that articulate problems that may help improve the organisational image.

Zoyisile Vena, a customer found this approach rather ‘unsupportive’ because the front desk did little to help him. “I had to run around by myself trying to locate the office that was going to solve my problem” said Vena. Buhle Mooitjies a security guard at the front desk finds this approach ‘not that disruptive’ as, “We try to help customers to the best of our ability”.