About one year ago we began working for the DVLA. The Agency is a monopoly – dealing with all the records, enquiries, medical issues and enforcement notices for over 38 million drivers.
The overall aim of the project was to improve the interactions between Agency and customers, increase psychological knowledge and understanding of self and others, develop confidence in persuasive techniques and conflict resolution and, most crucially, train the Contact Centre Representatives in Psycho-Linguistics – a unique combination of Psychology and Language that allows to manage the content of messages as well as customers’ emotional reaction. Put it simply, our mission was to revolutionise the DVLA contact centre.
We conducted an experiment related to telephone conversations from the Agency’s Swansea contact centre that handles calls for the whole of the UK.
Over 547 people evaluated the image of the Organisation based on calls recorded before the training took place. The graph below, which has been produced to scale, illustrates how the Agency used to come across.
More recently, the image of the Organisation has been re-considered on the basis of calls made by Agency staff who had been trained by our team.
Concepts such as trust, empathy, sincerity and care for the customer moved sharply from left to right. Listeners agreed the tone of voice is now warm, friendly and personal. The overall communication style shifted from formal and traditional to modern, vibrant and dynamic.
Well done, DVLA! Mission accomplished!
