Amazon Connect helps departments of motor vehicles modernize call centers

In the last few years, many state motor vehicle departments agencies quickly transformed their processes and adopted new procedures to accommodate changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, like social distancing, contactless interactions, decreased staffing, and other constraints. Now, agencies can build upon these changes by modernizing their systems with intelligent automation—transitioning from reactive to proactive engagements with their citizens.

Motor vehicle departments can meet residents where they’re at by offering an omnichannel communication experience, with a single point of contact available across multiple access points such as voice, live chats, text messaging, and email. For instance, Amazon Web Services (AWS) services such as Amazon Connect and Amazon Lex chatbots can enable and empower constituents to quickly locate information using self-service options, reducing wait times and reserving in-person resources for the most complex and high-touch interactions. Using the same technology, constituents can also locate their nearest Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) office and schedule appointments based upon the office availability.

In this blog post, learn how you can use AWS to connect and retrieve data either from an enterprise on-premises database or other third-party integration that allows for both a modernized outreach or an inbound customer experience.

Prerequisites

For this use case example, the following AWS services are used: Amazon Connect, Amazon Lex, Amazon Pinpoint, AWS Lambda.

How AWS can help improve constituent services

Figure 1: Modernized proactive outreach for departments of motor vehicles.

One way DMVs can modernize the constituent experience is by being proactive in constituent outreach—sending automatic reminders for impending expiration dates for issued drivers licenses, vehicle registration renewal notices, or reminders for upcoming appointments that have been previously scheduled. DMVs can set up a cloud-based solution to pull constituent records from a database, parse the necessary information, and send an informational message to constituents ahead of events that may have been forgotten or potentially delayed due to post-pandemic processes.

In the scenario, agencies can utilize an event trigger that invokes an AWS Lambda function to initiate a series of events to include querying a database of information. Based upon the matched criteria retrieved from this returned query, an automated message can then be sent to the constituent via the channel of their preference. This could be an email reminder sent to a specific email on file or SMS message, that could connect to an agent or provide necessary information.

This solution can be customized to match the desired workflow for the agency. This may look like including personalized dynamic contact flows within these messages that have natural language-understanding chatbots greet the constituent by name, directly offer assistance concerning an upcoming event or previous reported issue, or automatically field frequently asked questions about individual specifics. For instance, if a constituent receives an automatic message about an impending expiration date for their driver’s license, but has questions about how to renew it, these contact flows can connect the constituent to a chatbot or agent to answer their questions. Plus, chatbots can also provide the self-service functionality for frequent constituent requests like these, such as beginning the process of renewing driver’s licenses or scheduling an appointment. These modernizations can assist in driving customer wait times down by reducing the number of calls to queue that require an agent to assist while providing an overall better and empowering customer experience.

If the constituent is unable to address their concern through self-servicing capabilities, the interaction can be seamlessly escalated to an agent for additional assistance via calls, chats, or SMS text messages. 

Figure 2: A modernized inbound experience for departments of motor vehicles.

There may also be times when constituents need to contact the DMV for assistance with administrative tasks, such as obtaining a duplicate license, changing an address, scheduling office appointments, or asking a simple question regarding processes or to obtain general information.

To help meet this need, agencies can utilize solutions like the QnABot on AWS from the AWS Solutions Library to quickly deploy a multi-channel, multi-language conversational chatbot that responds to customer’s questions, answers, and feedback. Agencies can use advanced configurations such as Bot Routing to interact with other configured self-servicing chatbots that can be deployed across multiple channels including chat, voice, and SMS for your contact center.

In this example (Figure 2), the constituent can initiate an interaction through one of the many available channels of communication (call, SMS text message, or chat) to engage with the DMV to manage their needs. This experience uses personalized and dynamic contact flows with natural language understanding chatbots to interact with the constituent and progress the interaction and complete the desired tasks accordingly with an integrated system to process the request. By providing the constituent with a self-service solution, the constituent can complete this interaction and their request without having to wait for an agent—improving the customer experience by eliminating long and unnecessary wait times. Similar to the previous outbound example (Figure 1), if an interaction needs to be escalated to an agent, the interaction can be seamlessly and appropriately routed to the correct agent for additional assistance.

Conclusion

This post explains how AWS services such as AWS Lambda functions to query data in conjunction with event triggers can allow DMVs to provide and send out reminders proactively to their constituent population via SMS, email, or voice calls. Additionally with the deployment of a self-service Amazon Lex bot and solutions like QnA bot on AWS, you can empower constituents to obtain information and complete desired tasks without the need of assistance from an agent. These improvements are designed to increase the overall customer experience, but also can help the DMV realize reduction in operational cost through call deflection and lowering of long wait times.

To learn more about how AWS can support your DMV’s modernization efforts with Amazon Connect, reach out to our team.