DMV online chat

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

The Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder’s office takes pride in delivering exceptional customer service. For the county’s Motor Vehicle division (DMV), that means processing transactions efficiently, minimizing wait times, and ensuring that customers are able to access the information they need as easily as possible. The Jeffco DMV must balance the need to serve roughly 500,000 constituents with ever-tightening budget constraints. There are five office locations and about 70 full-time employees. Like other DMV systems, a call center is open during business hours to assist customers. But—also as with other DMVs—wait times for the call center can be long, especially on Mondays and near the end of the month. And customers frequently come to an office in person, just to ask a question, or hoping to be served but without the right paperwork. To improve customer experiences in a meaningful yet affordable way, the Jeffco DMV worked with county IT partners to research and implement an online chat feature in late 2019. As a result, DMV employees can assist customers in real time via the website. Not only is staffing the online chat more cost-effective than a call center or in-person service counter, but customers also prefer it—particularly during a pandemic. In 2020, the first year our chat was fully operational, we served more customers via chat than we did over the phone.