Community service staff key to building bridges with authorities
Wang Xiaojun (left) receives a resident at Linfen Road Community Affairs Service Center.
Working at a customer service window is considered nothing but tedious by many staff. But Wang Xiaojun believes it is a way to build bridges between residents and policymakers.
"We work on the front line to gather opinions from our people and report them to authorities in time, hoping to drive changes like streamlining administrative processes to make life easier," she said.
Wang is the director of Linfen Road Community Affairs Service Center. There are only 26 staff, and they have to handle more than 100,000 items of business every year.
During the pandemic lockdowns, all staff became community volunteers to assist nucleic acid testing, transfer cases of close contact and operate the 24-hour hotline.
The hotline did not stop when the lockdown was over. It is still running.
Wang and her colleagues are on duty to offer emergency consultation services and answer questions, like how to renew prescriptions. "Every day, we would receive about 200 calls," she said.
Apart from their busy work schedule, staff are also required to do training from time to time about latest policies. "We have to know everything," Wang stressed.
She once had to deal with a resident who lost his temper at the center because his business couldn't be handled without proper documents.
"He argued that he had called us in advance for a consultation and one of the service window staff told him what he had brought in was enough," she said.
"Later I learned that the person who dealt with him didn't know about the business he wanted. At that time, each customer service window was only responsible for one type of business," she said.
The incident inspired Wang to launch a reform to "break the boundaries" imposed by having specific service windows.
Now, every one of the 26 staff can explain various policies.
