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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

Improving Customer Service inside LPA Offices

​A significant focus of the NC Division of Motor Vehicles (NCDMV) in the recent past has been on improving customer service, including at the License Plate Agency (LPA) offices in the state. In that regard, the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) performed an extensive study in 2013-14 which, among other findings, found that across North Carolina's 120 LPA offices, about 28.5% of customer interactions resulted in incomplete transactions. In other words, in almost a third of all cases, customers visiting these offices (and having waited in line), are unable to accomplish what they came there for, thus necessitating at least one additional return trip. Based on 2013-14 data on annual transactions, a rough estimate is that North Carolina loses over five person-years due to incomplete transactions, even without accounting for travel time by customers visiting the LPA offices. The study also discovered that incomplete transactions are ubiquitous across the state. Therefore the overall conclusion of the report was that incomplete transactions may be one of the largest negative factors affecting customer satisfaction in North Carolina with NCDMV services. This underscores the need to alleviate the number of incomplete transactions across North Carolina's LPA offices. To date there hasn't been any study on these transactions, their reasons and suggested remedies. In response to the above, this proposal seeks to initiate a project dedicated to studying the problem of incomplete transactions across all LPA offices in North Carolina, collecting field data, analyzing the same and proposing solutions, including the usage of a recently developed website by an LPA contractor (www.transfermyauto.com).