ON THE ROAD to convenience

In the first of our two-part series on self-service, Andrew Rhodes, Head of Electronic Services at DVLA (Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency), reveals how giving customers the tools to self-serve is being applied successfully in the UK public sector

Each year, the DVLA issues 44 million tax reminders and 6.8 million driving licences. The agency also collects around £5 billion in tax, receives 20.2 million items of mail and carries out 80 million outbound transactions. Despite this workload, the association has a 3% year-on-year budget cut to contend with, which is why the introduction of Electronic Vehicle Licensing (EVL) has proved so invaluable.

EVL allows customers to relicense vehicles or make a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) online or over the telephone. This can be done 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The result? EVL is saving 33% on every transaction, equating to £21 million over three years and £50 million over the next eight. At peak times, DVLA can now process up to 86,000 transactions a day – all the more impressive when you consider 86,000 were processed in a month in 2005. When EVL was introduced, the DVLA set a target of 39% take-up by 2015. Already, 36% take-up has been achieved, but there are still a number of challenges to overcome. “We deal with everyone in the UK, not just with the early adopters of technology,” Andrew Rhodes points out. “One of the big challenges is how to tailor the message,” he adds.

Download the full article to find how the service enables the DVLA to handle peak times more effectively and learn how self-service is driving a healthier customer relationship.