Changing Customer Service

BULLET BACKGROUND PAPER

ON

OPTIONS TO IMPROVE AF FORCE SUPPORT UNITS’ CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

PURPOSE

Across the Air Force all Force Support Squadrons (FSS) use the Department of Defense program Interactive Customer Evaluation (ICE) to collect customer feedback for their activities. While there are some activities that use hand written comment cards and lock boxes many rely on ICE exclusively. Customer feedback is the lifeblood to activities to aid them in understanding customer needs, effectiveness of the programs, staff interaction, training implementation, etc. However a recent survey of 26 CONUS Air Force sites/bases (31% of ICE locations) revealed the program is not being used effectively and as a result activities may be suffering due to a lack of customer feedback. This paper demonstrates the lack of use of ICE and provides options to improve feedback collection and usage of that critical information.

DISCUSSION

Currently 87 CONUS Air Force locations/bases are listed for review on the ICE website. A survey of 26 locations (31%) was recorded (list of specific bases available). Only 587 responses were received from customers over nearly a 3 month span of time (3 Sept 12 – 25 Nov 12). Since many base FSS units see thousands of customers per month it is evident that far less than .01% of customers provided feedback during this nearly 3 month period. ICE includes a reminder on each survey screen that unless 25 responses have been received the data collected is not meaningful (only 4 activities/sections across 26 bases/sites achieved this). A cursory look at ICE data available in February 13 reveals the same lack of significant feedback.

Loews Hotels uses a customer survey feedback system (commercial off the shelf) called Market Metrix. The hotels consistently receive a guest feedback rate in excess of 20%. This system also ranks each activity based on customer feedback across all of their hotels internationally. Employees’ salary and job...