On 03 November 2014 the South African Revenue Service (Sars) announced that as of 01 November 2014, all telephone calls to Customs offices in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State would automatically be routed to the Sars Contact Centre.
According to Sars this follows the successful migration of calls to the provinces of the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape in October 2013. Sars tripled the number of Contact Centre agents to handle the expected increase in Customs-related calls.
Customs clients in these provinces will now enjoy the benefit of a single point of contact and extended hours, with the Contact Centre open until 22:00 on weekdays and over weekends to handle Customs queries.
It is understood that calls will be handled by Contact Centre agents specially trained to deal with Customs queries. Where a query can’t be resolved instantly, calls are routed to Sars consultants and then to specialist Customs officers, if needed, to make sure all queries are resolved.
According to Sars the routing of Customs calls to the Contact Centre in the remaining Customs offices will take place in 2015.