EdC Unveils New Customer Center for 
Help at All Hours

A 24-hour emergency phone line with quick response units, better customer service for voicing complaints and paying bills, and new electricity service installed three times faster were among the features Electricite kite du Cambodge announced at the opening of it first customer service center on Wednesday.

The center, located at 210 Mao Tse-tong Blvd, is part of EdC's restructuring of its Phnom Penh operations. The city is being divided in two sections, each with a customer service office.

Tse-tung boulevards on the north and south and Street 70 and the Tonle Sap river on the east and west will be served by the current EdC office at Wat Phnom where a customer service office is   to open in February 2002. The     other customers will be handled     at the new office on Mao Tse-tung Boulevard (te1:023-21529).

Each office will have about 140 employees who will process all customer needs from installation to request and payment, to emergency response by units equipped with minivans and motorcycles. The offices will be open from 7:30 am to 4:30 pin though emergency service will be available 24 hours. People also will be able to call to check on their bills during once hours. The waiting period for new service should go down from 45 to 15 days, said Men Sarun, executive commercial director for EdC.

The project is being funded through a $3.5 million grant from the French development agency. Electricite de France, which has been providing technical assis­tance to EdC since the early 1990s, is helping with the project. Restructuring operations into two full service offices became necessary due to EdC's increasing number of customers, said Patrick Le Penven, the EdF project manager in Cambodia. EdC has gone from 38,000 customers in 1998 to 110,000 today, he said.