Dubai, Februrary 19: Companies owning huge fleets of vehicles would be barred from visiting the Roads and Transport Authority’s (RTA) customer care centres for the registration of vehicles.
In the next few months the authority is moving the bulk transaction service online.
The RTA is currently conducting workshops and pilot projects with a few firms that own huge fleets of vehicles to test the online services. Though the online facility is already available, the idea is to make it compulsory once the pilot phase proves successful.
“Our big focus these days is to move as many services as possible away from our customer care centres, because we have introduced that online and phone channels. Right now the registration of vehicles, renewal of licences, application of certificates etc. could be availed both through our website and our contact centre,” said Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyna, CEO of the RTA’s Licensing Agency.
The bulk transaction service allows registration of up to 100 vehicles at a time, through a single file, single bill and single payment. The service, when made compulsory for companies having big fleets of vehicles, will help save a lot of time and reduce the workload both for the RTA staff as well as the customers.
Though the service has been live for some time now, it was not popularised as the RTA was trying to iron out glitches if there were any. The Licensing Agency is now working with some of the big fleet owners to try the service and once satisfied with its performance, it will be made compulsory for all big fleet companies.
“What we are trying to do is to prevent these big guys from flooding our centres with hundreds of their files at a time and cause inconvenience to others. Right now, they do it manually at our centres. When they are on the queue, other customers get blocked for a long time and we don’t want this to happen,” said Bahrozyan. He added that since these companies have a better alternative now, the RTA wants them to use it and that is the reason the authority is planning to make online vehicle registration mandatory for them. This will also mean they will be effectively banned from renewing registration of vehicles through the RTA’s customer care centres.
The target of the service mainly would be transport companies, rent-a-car firms, schools, construction firms, courier companies etc.
The modus operandi of the system is quite simple. The customer has to register with the RTA’s website and open a traffic file where in he/she can feed the details of all vehicles he or his company owns. This is a one-time job. The website issues a dashboard for each company or individual and saves all the data that is fed. The dashboard also displays those vehicles that are up for registration and what are the fines, if any, pending for each vehicle.
A company can then choose the number of vehicles that are up for registration — up to 100 at a time — by clicking on the vehicle numbers displayed on screen and process the transaction by paying the total fees and fines in a single click.
Bahrozyan said that if a company owns hundreds of vehicles and all are due for registration at the same time, different employees can work from different computers at the same time and process the transaction by choosing a basket of 100 vehicles each. He hoped that the companies will take up the service enthusiastically and avoid blocking the customer care centres even before it is made mandatory. Any company that owns more than one vehicle will come under the purview of the mandatory bulk transaction service.
Currently, the RTA sees an average of 1,000 people using its non-face-to-face channels for their various transactions and though it’s a good number, the RTA’s objective is to find out ways to attract more people towards online and contact centre channels and ease rush at the customer care centres.
“We are happy with the current number of users of online and contact centre services, but our aim is to increase the number dramatically over the next two months. We aim to do it by launching a mega marketing package as well as through other devices like bulk transaction services,” said Bahrozyan.
He said that many people are still not aware that they can renew the registration of their vehicles from the comfort of their living rooms and offices. “Once people know this and realise how convenient it is, we expect greater traffic online,” he added, informing that he himself renewed the registration of his vehicle online.
“I found it very easy and I got my registration card delivered in four days right here in my office. I want all the people to try it once and see how convenient it is. If the people try these different channels, it will not only be convenient for them, it will also help us improve our efficiency at the customer care centres,” he said.
Apart from the online and contact centre, the renewal of vehicle registration could also be done through five select insurance companies.
–Agencies–