Bulawayo City COUNCIL WORKERS VOW TO OFFER EXCELLENT CUSTOMER CARE

Written by Ntando Sibanda - ZDDT Reporter Tuesday, 06 December 2011 14:51

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Bulawayo City Council (BCC) employees have indicated a desire to provide state-of-art customer service to boost revenue collection.

This was revealed after ZDDT conducted a Service Excellence Training Workshop for middle management staff from various departments of BCC as part of its Local Authority Capacity Building Programme.

The local authority was only collecting 31 percent of its potential revenue, seriously limiting Service Delivery. This anomaly had been partly attributed to the employees’ lack of courtesy when attending to ratepayers’ concerns in various Council Departments. ZDDT responded to the need and such training over the past year has resulted in this percentage exceeding 90.

The workshop was aimed at eventually improving Council revenue collection. It was well attended with 17 students who actively participated and exhibited customer care skills of varying levels.

Asked to comment on the competency training workshop, the attendees expressed enthusiasm that it would yield positive results by eventually turning them into ornaments of professional practice.

“The workshop was an eye opener; some of the sins were committed unknowingly. I learnt how to deal with difficult customers and I will definitely put that knowledge into practice,” said one student.

Another attendee added that, “the workshop was fruitful. We would like ZDDT to continue the training for at least six months and issue us with proper certificates”.