POSTED: 2:56 p.m. EDT May 15, 2003
UPDATED: 9:47 a.m. EDT May 16, 2003
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Gov. Mark Sanford has a vision for your trip to the Division of Motor Vehicles: A warm welcome from a greeter followed by quick service from a counter worker uninterrupted by phone calls.
Sanford's goal is to make the agency more cost effective, more efficient and more customer friendly.
To help make that happen, Sanford announced five changes to the DMV that will take effect this summer.
All DMV employees will get customer service training. Every employee will be required to attend a seminar in Columbia at the end of this month. To check on the effectiveness of that training, each DMV office in the state will be graded on customer satisfaction.
To make service better, each DMV office will have a greeter to say hello to customers and answer their questions.
Phones will be removed from counter service stations, so employees won't have to interrupt service to customers to handle calls.
Starting in June, some services that once required a trip to the DMV will be available over the Internet. Customers will be be able to check driver's license points, pay fees, change addresses and even renew a license on the Web.
Starting June 7 and continuing through the summer, six high traffic DMV offices will be open on Saturdays. In the Upstate, the office on Saluda Dam Road in Berea will have weekend hours.
To save money, Sanford has instructed the DMV to stop paying a consultant $104 per hour to work on the agency's computer system.
The DMV will save $2 million per year by bringing handling that job internally, Sanford said.
In addition, state prison inmates will take over janitorial and maintenance work at DMV offices, saving the state another $500,000 per year.
A bill aimed at making the DMV more efficient a bill is working its way through the General Assembly.
The house passed the bill in March and it is awaiting a vote in the Senate.
The proposal would would make the DMV a stand-alone agency with a director who reports to the governor.
It would allow private companies to take over some functions of the DMV, such as permitting car dealerships to issue registration.
Drivers license renewals would be extended from 5 to 10 years, a move that would save 250,000 people per year a trip to the DMV.
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