Results of the Spring 2006 Customer Service Satisfaction Survey

USPHS Commissioner Corps Officer:

An important part of the Transformation of the Commissioned Corps is our pursuit of both policy and operational changes designed to better support and enhance your career as an officer. Customer service satisfaction is one of a number of metrics that will be used by Corps leadership to measure and monitor our effectiveness and progress over time. As we proceed with the Transformation of the Commissioned Corps we will repeat this survey at least every other year. As we navigate the Transformation over time, your written concerns, comments and the trends of these surveys will offer extremely valuable feedback.

We wish to thank the more than 30% of our officers who participated in the Commissioned Corps Customer Service Satisfaction Survey conducted this last spring. We encourage everyone to participate in the next survey which we anticipate will occur sometime in 2007. In this survey we received valuable feedback about the services provided by the various Commissioned Corps personnel offices serving you. An Executive summary and the full survey is now available on the Corps website for your review.

The “Officer Report” was prepared by the project contractors, Anteon Corporation and EASI-Consult, LLC, who administered the survey and compiled the survey results. The “Officer Report” is organized into five separate pdf files for easy access and contains the following information (you will need Adobe Reader to view these files - you can download Adobe Reader at http://www.adobe.com/):

Executive Summary; Survey Response Rates; Overall Results; Location Group Results; and Open-ended Responses (representative responses grouped by main topic).

In the Fall of 2005, the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps contracted Anteon Corporation and EASI-Consult, LLC, to develop a web-based PHS Commissioned Corps Customer Service Satisfaction Survey. The survey was directed to the active-duty members of the Commissioned Corps who are the internal customers of the Office of Commissioned Corps Operations (OCCO), the Office of Commissioned Corps Force Management (OCCFM), Commissioned Corps Systems Branch (CCSB), Compensation Branch (CB), and Medical Affairs Branch (MAB). Survey invites were emailed to 5,934 active duty commissioned officers. Between March 27, 2006 and April 25, 2006, a total of 1,821 officers provided responses resulting in an overall response rate of 31%. We are informed that this is a significant participation rate for these kinds of surveys.

We are now beginning a detailed analysis of the results but a preliminary review makes it quite clear that there is great opportunity for us to better serve you. We stand ready and committed to do so. The Transformation of the Commissioned Corps provides us the opportunity and the resources to respond in tangible ways. It is clear that one key message is that we must improve the quality, frequency and timeliness of our communications to and from their CC personnel offices and from Corps leadership. In the future our communications must be prompt, courteous, and responsive to the information needs and requests of officers. The survey also highlighted the need for us to better define and clarify the roles and functions of the various personnel offices that provide direct and supportive services. Corps leadership stands committed to addressing the many concerns highlighted by this survey. We will do everything in our power to improve our customer satisfaction over time. We serve you.

Over the coming weeks the Directors of the CC personnel offices will review the customer survey results and discuss ways to improve the overall customer satisfaction of Corps officers over time. We encourage each of you to review the results of the survey and send your thoughts and suggestions on ways to improve customer service through your chief professional officers or commissioned corps liaisons to the Office of the Surgeon General. Your input will be included in the process that the Directors of the CC personnel offices will use to develop and implement enhancement to their service. We will subsequently communicate our plans and progress via the eBulletin on how the offices will address improving customer services and introduce future plans to conduct follow-up customer surveys.

Thank you again for your valuable input.

 

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