Eskom customers will be left with pop-up offices and the online fault report service, Alfred the Chatbot.City of Cape Town Mayco member for energy Beverley van Reenen said about 70% of the metro is supplied by the City, and the rest is powered and serviced by Eskom, including Delft, Khayelitsha and Bellville.
The City said that it had seen a ‘notable increase’ in Eskom-related complaints on its customer channels, which had meant that ‘elected public representatives as well as City staff end up grappling with those service requests, often having to appease irate communities for Eskom matters’. Van Reenen said the City has seen an increase in complaints about Eskom faults that are not being responded to, and long waiting times for servicing faults. These particularly affect more vulnerable communities who ‘suffer the most’. ‘We try our best to act as an intermediary,’ she said.
Eskom also said Alfred the Chatbot had ‘been a resounding success since it went live and still proves to be the most popular channel for customers to log faults’.