Why I love answering phone calls about the DMV at 6:30 in the morning

Ryder Pearce
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

It was 6:30am last Friday and my phone started ringing. I was still sleeping but turned to look at the number. It was some random California number and my Lassie instinct kicked in: Someone needs DMV help. So I grabbed the phone, stood up, and answered the call without hesitating…

Getting the (wrong) answers

It was only several months ago that I had to make multiple DMV visits over the course of a few months. The experience involved three office visits, multiple forms, multiple calls to banks, multiple calls to the DMV, multiple calls to my car dealership, and notarized signatures.

What should have taken minutes took months.

The lesson learned was clear: Without exception, everyone I talked to gave me different answers. Why? When I actually figured out what I needed to do, it was incredibly easy.

As I reflected on this I asked myself a couple questions:

Why couldn’t I get the correct answer on the first try from the people that do this stuff every single day?

If you need to transfer ownership of a vehicle in California, have the legal owner fill out this form with their notarized signature.

That is literally the answer I needed.

On my way to this aha, I was given a bunch of other confusing hoops to jump through. Maybe I just wasn’t asking the right questions? Or maybe I was? But shouldn’t it be easy enough to find the info to ask the right questions in the first place? We are talking about cars here, not rockets.

Why hasn’t the DMV experience changed?

The second thing I asked was:

Why hasn’t the DMV experience fundamentally improved?

As I dove into this question I began talking to others who had similar experiences, I realized what you need done at the DMV can actually be easy👉

  1. Information can be simplified.
  2. Answers can be found.
  3. Lines can be skipped.

Sure the DMV has decades of negative stereotypes that have permeated our public consciousness in the US. But these stereotypes don’t actually have to exist.

With a little bit of empathy, customer service, and technology, I was pretty positive interacting with the DMV could fundamentally change. So that’s what I decided to do.

What if I could help do things differently?

I decided that I could be part of the solution. I could start helping people directly with DMV appointments and DMV information. I founded YoGov last fall (originally called YoDMV) to do just that.

Today YoGov is helping thousands of people a week with DMV services and appointments, with a few other government services coming online soon.

Our secret? Talk to people, listen to their questions, and give them clear answers. That’s pretty much it. (Well we also have a cool way of booking DMV appointments). I hear the shock in people voices all the time: Wait, can this be for real? I just called and you picked up and immediately understood where I was coming from and answered my questions? What’s going on?

“Hi, this is Ryder from YoGov”

Back to last Friday’s 6:30am phone call. I put in my headphones and answered the call. The caller was someone from San Jose who at 1am realized he lost his driver’s license. He was panicking because he was heading to the airport that evening and desperately needed an ID. He needed to get to the DMV.

While he was explaining his situation, I shuffled over to my computer and saw that at 2am he’d booked a “last-minute appointment” with us for a 10am appointment at the Santa Clara DMV. He wanted to confirm that he was good to go. I checked a few things and was able to quickly assure him that he was good to go.

Yes, your name is now in the system for the appointment. So just skip the line and go right to the appointments section! You’re all set but call us back if you have any questions and have a great appointment!

The reward in surprising people

The caller messaged us after his appointment with praise for 1) being able to get the last-minute appointment and 2) getting in and out of the DMV so quickly. It was fantastic! Crisis averted, and another person with a positive experience with the DMV and with government services.

Directly helping people like this is our mission at YoGov. One of the ways we’ve been characterizing ourselves is “your government services concierge”.

We want to be the friendly voice on the other end of the phone (or email) that understands your situation and offers you the best possible solutions.

We want to be the people behind the company that help change how you think about government services.

One call at a time

For me, my phone rings a lot now. It’s people who have questions about appointments. It’s people who have questions about forms. It’s people who just want some assurance that their approach to the DMV is correct. And it’s people who are starting to use some of our other government services (at the city and federal levels….)

While our team is only a handful of passionate people, we still do our best to answer every call or quickly answer every email as we keep growing. We want to keep growing our mission to personalize government services and make government services friendlier for you. So if you need something done at the DMV or want to see the latest services we’re cooking, visit us at YoGov. And if you want to chat, give us a ring! (🗣 415–275–2563) And lastly, if you don’t want call us right now, reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter!

Ryder Pearce

Written by

Founder, @YoGov__ Co Founder, @SherpaShare

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