BWSSB officer, Prahlad Rao, who is in-charge of the control room, says they receive about 200 complaints every day.
Some of their collegues have resigned and others are complaining that the work pressure is unbearable. However, employees at the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) control, which functions with busy schedules all the time attending to the water woes of Bangaloreans, seem to know how to tackle it.
BWSSB officer, Prahlad Rao, who is in-charge of the control room, says they receive about 200 complaints every day. “A total of eight customer care associates (CCA) and one supervisor work in three shifts at the 24X7 call centre. The complaints they receive relate to supply, sanitation, billing and connection.”
According to a staffer at the control room, the call flow peaks between 9 am and 11 am when up to 100 complaints are registered. “But we keep our cool at the workplace. This helps us in handling the angry and frustrated customers smoothly,” he said.
Although the CCA work throughout the year, they manage to take a day off every week with one of their colleagues working overtime.
The three women employees at the call centre are given permanent morning shifts and allowed to leave by 6pm. The CCA often have to bear the brunt of the consumers’ ire. However, the supervisor has not yet taken any action against consumers.
A woman staffer says the first thing they tell the residents is that a solution on the way. “Sometimes, we get repeated calls from the same area saying the residents are in dire need of drinking water. In such cases, we explain the gravity of the problem to the engineer concerned and get the job done,” says she.
Water board uses a web-based comprehensive complaint management system (CMS) which centralises and automates logging of consumer complaints from the call centre, service stations and various client officers’ stations. To lodge a complaint, the consumer can contact the BWSSB through six call centre numbers. Complaints can also be filed on the BWSSB website www.bwssb.org, via e-mail callcentre@bwssb.org and SMS.
When a complaint is raised by a consumer, he/she receives a complaint ID through SMS, confirming that the complaint has been successfully lodged. The engineer concerned will also receive a SMS for that complaint id with all the information including complaint description, address and contact no of the complainant. Depending on the seriousness of the complaint, the engineer has to complete a task within 24 hours. If he fails, the complaint will be escalated to higher authorities through a SMS notification. This escalation will continue to occur till the task is completed by the engineer.
When a complaint is attended, the engineer will send an SMS that a particular complaint ID is attended. The consumer at the other end will receive an SMS stating that the complaint was successfully completed. Once the customer receives this, he /she will receive a call from the CCA at the call centre asking for the feedback. Depending on the feedback given by the consumer, the CCA will either close the complaint or re-assign the complaint to the engineer concerned.
A hotline system connects the call centre to all the six divisional offices, 27 sub-divisional offices and 109 service stations in the city, while a dedicated phone line supports verification of complaint resolution. The complaints are updated daily according to the status of the work’s progress as ‘fixed’, ‘invalid’, ‘need more information’ or ‘closed’.
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