As part of a drive to attend to escalations timeously, SA Revenue Service Customs has introduced a centralised email box. “We need your help,” Customs manager Moabi Setshedi told delegates at a recent business breakfast.
“Typically escalations are sent to us by email – and probably right now five or six emails will have come through to the management team’s mailboxes. We can’t answer timeously because we are often in in meetings such as this one and are therefore not necessarily available in real time to help with issues.”
To avoid any delay, stakeholders are advised to direct all queries to: C&EEscalations@ sars.gov.za “For example, if you send a query at 8am we’ll try to have it resolved in two or three hours. Trade is asked not to copy us in on those emails as they clog up our mailboxes because our email boxes only take attachments up to five megabytes.”
This fits with the revenue authority’s strategy to strengthen its responses by providing more dedicated capacity to deal with service issues. Currently the same people are approached over and over again.
The objective of dedicated capacity is to spread the load and speed up the response.
If you send a query at 8am we’ll try to have it resolved in two or three hours. – Moabi Setshebi
