PHOENIX — A new report suggests much of what you’ve heard about the trauma of a trip to the Motor Vehicle Division is true.
“MVD field offices do not consistently provide a good customer service experience,” state Auditor General Debbie Davenport concluded Friday. Davenport said her staffers found various problems in their examination of the agency.
On paper, she said, MVD data show the agency is meeting its waiting-time goal of nearly 23 minutes, covering from when a customer gets a numbered ticket at the information desk and ending when that same person gets to a window.
But she said those numbers do not paint a true picture.
During the period checked, Davenport said nearly 118,000 people — about 4.2 percent of those who go to MVD offices — waited longer than an hour just to get to the window.
She also said that those who need to get a driver’s license or make changes, versus those dealing with vehicle-registration issues, generally had to wait even longer.
For example, two customers surveyed by auditors reported spending more than five hours trying to get a license, a process that includes a road test. A third said the process took her three hours.
The discrepancy is because the official waiting times listed by the MVD in its reports don’t include everything.
On the front end, Davenport said, customers have to wait in line just to get one of those numbered tickets. Her undercover “mystery shoppers” reported waits of less than a minute to as much as 45 minutes to get to that point.
Chuck Saillant, the agency’s director of operations, acknowledged the additional waiting time, saying the goal is to have that be 30 minutes or less.
Saillant said delays in getting people a ticket — which is when their service clock starts ticking — are partly the result of mornings when people line up early.
Each person then needs to tell the information clerk what kind of transaction he or she needs — a driver’s license versus, say, renewing a registration — which determines in which waiting line they are put. The clerk also is supposed to determine if the person has all the necessary documents.
Then there’s the time after getting to the window, including waiting for a new driver’s license to be produced.
“Overall, mystery shoppers spent a total of 23 to 88 minutes to complete their transactions at MVD field offices,” Davenport said, figures not reflected in official MVD waiting times because of how the agency measures its own performance. Complicating matters is the fact that about 1 out of every 100 customers cannot finish the transaction in one visit.
Davenport said some of that is because people are unaware of the documents needed to complete transactions. For example, one customer at a Tempe office waited to get called to a service window only to be told they could not help him because he did not have his birth certificate.
And she said nowhere in the MVD offices are there signs or other information that might tell customers before they get in line that they first need to go home and get something else.
Saillant acknowledged that if the information desk clerks are busy, they will only ask whether someone has certain documents.
“They could say, ‘I have a birth certificate,’ ” he said. But the window clerk later finds it’s only a copy, which is not acceptable.
Davenport said the agency generally issues “return letters” to those who need to come back, something that should cut their waiting time. But even that does not always work, she said, as MVD computers are frequently down.
So those who cannot get their transactions done when they visit because of computer problems may also be unable to get a return letter. In fact, she said, MVD officials acknowledged that they do not always give such letters to customers when the computers go down “because there would be too many customers to give priority assistance to when they return the next day.”
MVD officials told her the agency’s computers, which handle driver’s licenses, titles and registration, are more than 30 years old and are scheduled to be replaced by 2020.
Shan Hays, who managed the audit, said one thing that may help the overall situation is persuading more customers not to go to the MVD offices in the first place by doing more business online, such as vehicle registrations, or using approved vendors who can, for a fee, give road tests and get a license issued without ever visiting an MVD office.
Saillant said for those who must go to the MVD, timing is everything. He said Mondays are the busiest, followed by Fridays. And the 15th and last day of each month also produce a rush of people renewing their vehicle registrations.
Hays, in her report, said that even within the agency there were variances among offices. For example, waiting times were much longer in the Phoenix metro area than in rural Arizona.
Conditions at some offices are also an issue, such as one in Phoenix where mystery shoppers had to wait more than 30 minutes just to get a numbered ticket, most of that standing outside because the fire code restricted the number of customers allowed inside at one time.
And while there was a canopy with misters, the report says they created humidity and puddles.
“Once inside the building, the mystery shoppers encountered a crowded and dirty office with trash on the floor,” the report continues.
Auditors also found that while most of the staff at the service windows were courteous, friendly, helpful and polite, there were some who were “cranky, stressed or unhappy” and “not engaged with the work.”
And in one case they encountered a worker who was not only rude, but argued with the customer, wrongly stating that the transaction could not be completed with the documents provided.
It was only after the customer asked a supervisor to intervene that the representative’s error was corrected.
