One of government’s most visible agencies is diversifying its customer service operations, with increased automation in longstanding platforms as well as the use of new tools, according to its leader
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is “pushing the boundaries” in its use of artificial intelligence tools, according to the organisation’s chief executive Tim Moss.
For many citizens, the DVLA is one of the most familiar parts of government. Its contact centre in the agency’s home city of Swansea fields phone calls from 800,000 people each months, while a further 300,000 engage via a webchat service that operates using both human advisers and automated chatbots.
The facility is home to 150 multitasking advisers who support web chat, email, social media, and telephony customer service options.
To help broaden and improve these strands, the DVLA is “pushing the boundaries of AI”, according to Moss.
“When you look at how they’re using AI for digital development and some of the agentic AI stuff, to me this is almost black magic,” he said, in an interview with PublicTechnology sister publication Civil Service World.
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One example is the integration of a large language model system which enables ChatGPT-style searches of the 2,500 knowledge articles that help advisers get the information they need to help customers. The plan is to roll this out over the next few months to all advisers.
DVLA is also working with the Government Digital Service and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology on Gov Voice, an exploration of how AI voice technology can improve citizens’ experience of government call centres. Instead of talking to an adviser, for some of the simpler queries, customers could interact with the AI “as if you were talking to a human being and it’s answering back to you”, Moss said.
“Ultimately, it’s about: how do we deliver something better for our customers? But then also it’s the learning and the testing to say: how can that be applied across any of the other 90,000 people in government contact centres?”
Moss said that AI can help with the agency’s task of finding 15% efficiency savings over the Spending Review 2025 period, but added that “the primary focus has to be around the customer experience”.
“For me, it’s not about saying: how can we replace people or do things cheaper? It’s about saying: how can we use AI to deliver a better customer experience? That’s what we’re here to do. Once we get to the level of customer experience we want, we can then look at how we make this more efficient, more effective.”
