DVLA transforms contact centre services and telephony using Network Services 2

The requirement

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) holds more than 49 million driver records and over 40 million vehicle records. They collect around £7 billion a year in vehicle excise duty (VED). 

DVLA went to market to re-procure their telephony services contract (including contact centre functionality) to deliver a modern communication solution with increased functionality and flexibility, providing a better experience for customers and employees.

DVLA were keen to take advantage of the developments in the market since they last updated their system, and decided to take a technology-agnostic approach to their procurement. This allowed them to go to the market with an open tender rather than identify a specific solution, to increase competition and innovation. By focusing on outcomes, suppliers weren’t restricted in their approach to the competition. This led to a diverse response from the market, with bids ranging from on-premise network solutions to fully hosted and also hybrid.

The solution

As part of our ongoing relationship with DVLA, we regularly liaise with them to discuss upcoming procurements and the latest technological developments that they could benefit from.

The decision was taken to use Lot 10 (Unified Communications) of Network Services 2 for DVLA’s contract. 

The project team, supported by Ralph Hegarty from our Network Services team, engaged extensively with suppliers through site visits and supplier days. They carried out due diligence by consulting with internal experts to ensure that DVLAs requirements could be met through the provision of cloud, hybrid or on-premise solutions.

The results

DVLA ran a further competition using Network Services 2 (RM3808). The contract was awarded to Wavenet Limited. The 5 year contract will transform contact centre services along with DVLA’s back-office telephony, beginning with the cloud contact centre deployment. 

The contract is anticipated to deliver a smaller computer footprint that saves both space and power and offers increased opportunities for self-serve, automation, scalability and flexibility.

Rob Holohan, Contact Centre Product Owner at DVLA, commented,

From a customer perspective, this technology will deliver a greater choice around how and when customers contact us. A suite of management information (MI) and analytical tools will allow us to effectively measure and continuously improve the service we provide and ensure we are meeting customer needs.

It also gives us a great opportunity to deliver modern customer service tooling for our staff – and by providing a greater understanding of the customer journey it allows us to offer a more personalised and efficient customer experience. The new solution will allow us to revamp our IVRs (interactive voice response), automate some of the simpler enquiries that we receive and provide 24/7 support to our customers.

Justin Griffiths, Project Manager at DVLA, added:

The project will transform our contact centre services through Content Guru’s storm platform. This solution will integrate with our existing web channels and new telephony services. It will provide increased opportunities for our customers to use self-service and automation, as well as providing our staff with enhanced and improved communications tooling.

For further information

Our Network Services 2 framework has been designed to help you with all your telecom and

network requirements, from mobile, voice, and video, to data and security. To learn more you can view the web page or get in touch by completing our online form.  

Don’t forget, you can find a full list of all the commercial agreements we offer, alongside details of how we can help you build policy considerations into your procurement, in our interactive digital brochure.