Customer Wait Times Have Been Cut in Half
California DMV announces that Customer Wait Times Have Been Cut in Half - An all-out, Department-wide effort to lower the amount of time customers have to wait in line for service has paid off, with the latest statistics showing that the largest 91 offices have slashed average wait times from almost an hour to just minutes.
After spending the last two years facing fewer windows open and more customers coming through the door, wait times were soaring. On average, wait times had grown to almost one hour with some customers waiting as much as six hours for service. Utilizing data captured from QMATIC systems installed in our largest offices we were able to determine that we were opening the door everyday to 13,000 people waiting to be served with less than 50 percent of the available windows being staffed on a daily basis.
In February, the Field Operations Division (FOD) was challenged to reduce wait times to an average of 30 minutes by June 30, 2004. Enter - QMATIC Queuing System Data - FOD was able to immediately respond with the detail on exactly how many resources we would need to meet the challenge. The administration responded in kind and redirected funding to allow FOD to immediately hire additional permanent intermittent staff.
Hiring and training started in March, with some of the first technicians starting work in the most impacted offices in early April. Offices with the longest wait times as identified by the QMATIC systems got the most people. The impact was felt almost immediately as wait-times started to head down. Best of all, the goal of a statewide 30 minute average wait time was achieved five weeks before the deadline. For the month of May 2004, the statewide average wait time was 25 minutes, and they were maintained in June at 26 minutes, and July at 24 minutes.
In addition to giving us a statewide view of our wait time service level, each office is able to monitor their wait times throughout the day and utilize historical data to identify workload trends. The QMATIC systems automatically collect wait time information on each customer, track the various types of transactions, and provide management with real time workload information on the number of customers waiting for service, allowing them to reassign staff to where they are needed the most. It has also allowed us to post current wait times for offices on the Internet and at the office locations. This allows our customers to select the least busy office to visit and helps level our workload. Implementation of the QMATIC systems is an innovative and effective use of technology, which has greatly improved our customer service! - Lynn Hidley, Administrator, Field Operations Division, Customer Service and Technology Projects.