Customer service evaluation program effects change on JBER

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Kyle Johnson
  • JBER Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  Customer service is a relationship between the servicing agency and the recipient of that service. A relationship, by definition, cannot exist without communication between the two parties.

To achieve this communication, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson has the Interactive Customer Evaluation program.

"The ICE program was something we inherited from the Army side when we joint-based," said Bernadette Simmons, JBER's customer service officer and ICE administrator since September, 2015. "People need to have a way to express their feedback in order for services on base to improve. ICE provides a voice to the customers."

Even though Simmons is relatively new to the position, it is apparent she has taken ownership of the program and what it stands for. Hanging from the back of the monitor where she reviews roughly 1,800 comments per month is a quotation attributed to Mohandas Gandhi which reads "A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not an interruption of work; he is the purpose of it."

With so many comments streaming in per month, the ICE program has plenty of such purpose.

"We received an ICE complaint that said the hospital has reserved parking for pregnant [women] on the Bear Entrance, which is good" Jeff Liddle, a hospital engineer with the 673d Medical Group. "But the women's health clinic is by the Moose Entrance and there is no pregnant parking there."

Expectant mothers got preferred parking by the Bear Entrance, but they still had to walk to the other side of the hospital to get to the women's health clinic, Liddle said. This is an example of a simple problem with a simple solution, simply overlooked.
"It's one of those day-to-day things, we all get busy doing our jobs and sometimes you don't see the big picture. This is a big-picture item," Liddle said. "This is, in my opinion, one of the positives from the ICE program."

"I verified we had five at Bear and none at [the] Moose [entrance]," Liddle said. "I clarified with command to convert some open parking near Moose Entrance to [expectant mother] parking, procured the parking signs and put them up."

And just like that, a complaint was provided a solution, and because one person filed an ICE complaint, many expectant mothers will benefit for years to come.

Here's how it works.

Each of JBER's 231 service providers has an ICE account - tracked by Simmons - where complaints and compliments are tracked, Simmons said.
At each location, there is a little box where a customer can leave a comment card wherein they can explain what made their experience pleasantly delightful, or regrettably insufficient.

If an individual customer doesn't want to leave a card in person, can't find the box, or perhaps doesn't think to file a comment until after they've left the premises, they can go to the JBER website, www.jber.af.mil and click on the Interactive Customer Evaluation button on the right side of the screen.

Once in the ICE page, simply locate the service in question either by clicking on "All Services" or clicking on the appropriate service category from the left hand side.

"When customers request a response on a comment card, the service provider has three business days to respond," Simmons said. "If they can't fix the issue right there and then, they at least need to touch base and let the customer know they are working on it and will get back in touch when the issue is resolved."

For more information on the ICE program and JBER's standards of customer service, visit http://tiny.cc/jyzx7x.