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THE Zimbabwe National Water Authority has declared the month of March as its Customer Service month. It is a month where the authority will appreciate its clients, who have been part of its journey since its formation. As part of the client service month, senior management from Zinwa will take time to serve clients, working from various stations and points in the Authority where interaction with clients is high. This is meant to give management a better appreciation of the various touch points and pain points that clients go through in accessing our service. This is part of the Authority’s effort to morph into highly customer centric and customer focused organisation.

These efforts will see the Authority engage in a serious realignment of its operations and procedures as it transforms itself into a highly customer centric organisation. This shift will see Zinwa re-looking at its various processes with the view to place the customer at the centre of everything it does.

This is a deliberate move that is designed to improve service delivery, bring convenience to clients, improving customer confidence, building a strong and customer centric Zinwa brand as well as help boost the organisation’s revenue inflows.

The objective is to transform Zinwa into an organisation that listens to its customers, that has empathy for its clients and an organisation that anticipates and responds to the needs of its clients. As such, the organisation has embarked on a number of initiatives that seek to help it become a highly customer centred institution.

In its quest to attain this goal, Zinwa has developed a customer experience management strategy. Under the strategy, all Zinwa employees will receive training in customer experience management. Already some have already received customer experience management training which teaches them to develop and implement policies and procedures with the customer in mind. This will ultimately result in an improvement of Zinwa customers’ experience.

As part of these efforts, Zinwa is also in the process of revising its client service charter, which shall be re-launched sometime this year.

The revision of the client service charter follows quite a lot of valuable feedback that the organisation has been receiving from its clients and stakeholders. In addition, the client service charter will also seek to provide for cutting edge standards that will enable Zinwa to provide a seamless service to its customers.

The client service charter will provide standards for receiving feedback from customers, Zinwa’s response times to water supply breakdowns, standards for its billing as well as the obligations and responsibilities that clients also have as a partner in service delivery.

The organisation is also pursuing some technology based initiatives also aimed at improving the experience of its customers.  These technology based initiative include the introduction of electronic bills for clients.

Over the years, clients have been receiving physical bills delivered to their houses at the end of each billing period. Now this will be a thing of the past as customers now receive their bills and other important information on their mobile phones. Customers who are not yet receiving this service are encouraged to visit their nearest Zinwa offices and update their details.

Zinwa is also working on upgrading its Call Centre to make it a fully fledged contact centre which should be able to provide quick solutions and reduce the turnaround time for query resolutions.

This will entail the introduction of a ticketing system that allows the Call Centre to track the query as they get resolved in the organisation’s various departments. This will assist in bringing accountability.

Zinwa is also actively on social media articulating various matters that affect clients.

The Authority will also be engaging in a number of activities that aim to improve its customers’ experience. This will include revamping its reception areas, banking halls, water treatment plants and other installations to make them customer friendly while the use of feedback mechanisms such as the customer feedback forms and suggestion boxes at the water supply stations are also being strengthened.

Zinwa will also be coming into the communities through platforms such as road shows and meetings with customers to help spread awareness on its client service charter and related water issues.

In doing this, the organisation appreciates that it exists for and because of customers and these customers need nothing else except efficient, effective and reliable service.

For more information please contact the Zinwa Corporate Communications and Marketing Department on [email protected]. You can also like the Zimbabwe National Water Authority Facebook Page or follow us on Twitter @Zinwawater