More than 3 million owners of motor vehicles chose the SA Post Office to renew their vehicle licences in the past year. This is amongst an array of other services offered by the SA Post Office. As the new SA Post Office is obsessed with the customer, effective and efficient ways to serve customer needs are continuously being introduced.
The MVL service is being streamlined alongside all service offerings at the SA Post Office. The focus is on cutting the queues to reasonable levels and serve the customer within an acceptable length of time. To achieve this, the SA Post Office has introduced separate queues for its regular customers, doing their normal transactions – including money transfers, bill payments and other postal services.
The scheduling of SRD payments based on the last three digits of recipient ID numbers has been introduced, considerable reducing queue lengths and waiting times. This means that there are separate lines for social grant payments and other Post Office transactions.
Better yet, the SA Post Office, has, through the PostBank, introduced a system for grant eneficiaries to collect their payments – without having to stand in long queues at Post Office branches.
Effective immediately, most of these SRD grant beneficiaries can transact at Pick ‘n Pay and Boxer stores. Other channels will be introduced in due course. The SA Post Office will also be offering the service in conjunction with Spaza shops in local areas.
The aim is for the local economies to benefit by encouraging the beneficiaries to transact within their own localities – buying the goods and services they need, closer to home – thus also stretching their Rand a little further since they won’t have to incur travel costs.
The SA Post Office has gone out on a process to develop a mobile application for the renewal of motor vehicle licences. The Post Office would like to enable the customer to complete the whole process in the comfort of their own homes or offices.
The full renewal process, including payment, will be done on the app, leaving only the last step of accessing the actual disc. This will be done in one of two ways: the customer can either choose to collect from an SA Post Office outlet nearby; or the SA Post Office can deliver the disc to the customer – at an affordable delivery fee.
“We are serious about serving our customers’ needs – we have introduced a culture of being obsessed with the customer,” says Nomkhita Mona, Group CEO of the SA Post Office. This service – part of the SAPO in my Pocket strategy – will be available by the end of October this year. The Post Office will continue to offer in store renewal at selected Post Office branches.
An additional service offered by the SA Post Office is the bulk motor vehicle licence renewal for fleet and for employees of companies – no matter how big or small. This service entails the collection of all necessary documentation from company premises, taking them back to the Post Office for processing, printing and delivery back to their offices.
The Post Office has already signed up a number of corporates and is in the process of offering this bespoke service to more companies and other customers.
Mona believes that the organization has a crucial role to play in the lives of South Africans – and indeed within the region. The universal service obligation is not one to be taken lightly, as the majority of the citizens rely on the large footprint of the SA Post Office across the country. Leveraging on this large footprint, the organization will be rolling out a number of services in various areas – creating a meaningful hub for local communities.
“Huge winds of change are blowing within the SA Post Office, even in the face of massive financial challenges, there are equally massive opportunities for us to effect meaningful change – and deliver an institution that all South Africans can once again, be proud of,” says Mona.
Mona’s strategy of getting back to basics – introduced since her arrival at the organization six months ago, has started showing green shoots. As the organization had regressed so far, operationally and financially, Mona is under no illusion that this will be an easy task, but is confident that she is equal to the task.
Source: Government of South Africa