# Standardization and improving the customer experience are focus at second Customer Service Management Summit

/ Published Feb. 29, 2024
FORT BELVOIR, Va., 
The Defense Logistics Agency’s Customer Support Division recently hosted its second enterprise-wide Customer Service Management Summit in Lorton, Virginia.

More than 50 representatives from DLA’s major subordinate commands and DLA Information Operations attended the three-day event, at which they reviewed two new policies that will help create a cohesive strategy for customer interactions, resolution and satisfaction.

The first policy, the Customer Resolution Management Execution Policy, provides high-level procedures for the implementation and use of customer service management, the tool used to manage the approved customer relationship management strategy of providing next-generation customer support.

The second policy outlines the business rules for managing all levels of customer case management in CSM and provides baseline metrics for case resolution time and customer satisfaction.

The proposed policies are an organized and consistent approach to defining metrics for customer resolution time, customer satisfaction and other goals for customer service agents to manage customer cases, said John Sarnosky, a DLA customer relationship management and program analyst.

“Although we walked away agreeing on a baseline case resolution time metric, we all acknowledged that we may need to shift right or left as more customer service management users come onboard and we roll out new capabilities,” Sarnosky said.

The new policies put DLA on the correct path to improve customer support across the agency, he added.

“DLA is moving toward being a more data-driven, decision-based organization with initiatives like the Digital Business Transformation. Ensuring that processes and procedures are the same throughout the enterprise results in better decisions,” Sarnosky said.

The implementation of customer service management across all aspects of the agency will allow for seamless communication and tracking of customer issues throughout the entirety of the troubleshooting and resolution process, he added. It also will allow for seamless communication and the tracking of customer service issues throughout the case resolution process.

Thanks to these changes, DLA’s customers will eventually have a single form of communication from DLA rather than multiple ways from different parts of the agency, Sarnosky said. These new policies also will improve resolution time because one system will be used rather than multiple avenues of internal communication while resolving customer issues. This means customers will receive timely and quality responses to their questions.

One added benefit of the summit was getting the chance to spend time face-to-face with people that one may have worked with for many years but never met in person, Sarnosky said.

“Not only does it improve camaraderie, but it helps us learn about the nuances of each other’s business processes. We tend to be compartmentalized and this brings a cohesiveness to the overall customer service process,” he said. “DLA has customer-facing service representatives throughout the enterprise, so this impacts them directly and why it is important for them to have ownership in the policy.”