KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany -- It's U.S Army Garrison Kaiserslautern customers who have the power - to improve community services.
A garrison customer is anyone who lives, works or plays on Army installations in the Kaiserslautern military community, said Emma Vinson, the garrison's customer service officer.
"(It's a) great initiative, and I feel this focus group has a potential to develop and improve services for our retirees and their families," said Don Gwinn, the garrison's civilian misconduct officer, who attended the first retiree focus group May 12.
Quarterly focus groups, known as Community FIRST (Feedback, Issues, Resolutions, Solutions, Today), are the third approach to the Installation Management Command's new Customer Management Services. This program started in the Kaiserslautern military community in October and is one out of four IMCOM-Europe garrisons to implement the CMS program.
This new program is a process that provides U.S. Army garrison commanders with the voice of the customer. It's a way, explained Vinson, for IMCOM to get Army services to a level of dependability and predictability throughout the Army.
"So as families go from installation to installation, the quality of services is something they can rely on," she said.
How these Community FIRST focus groups fit into this process is as a bridge between the Department of Defense Web-based customer feedback system known as ICE, or Interactive Customer Evaluation, and the community-input route for Army leadership known as the Army Family Action Plan.
A brainchild of spouses, AFAP is an Army-wide program that gives all members of the team - active-duty and retired military, family members and civilian employees - a chance to voice concerns and raise issues to leadership.
Vinson describes ICE as a "conversation" because customers can log in complaints or compliments about a particular service and service providers respond to that issue. This conversation is the first approach in the new CMS program.
"Community FIRST focus groups are a bridge between these two processes because people can address issues that affect more than the individual without having to go higher than the garrison for resolution," Vinson said.
One example Vinson cited is an issue that was discussed in the family member focus group held during the second quarter of this fiscal year. The issue was to have more flexible hours at the garrison's child development centers for family readiness group meetings.
Under the Army Family Covenant, the garrison centers were providing child care for FRG meetings one Thursday night per month at each of the locations on Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Miesau Army Depot and Kleber Kaserne.
During the focus group, it was discussed that this schedule was hard for some FRGs to use, so the group asked the garrison's Child, Youth and School Services to be more flexible when accommodating these meetings. The answer back from CYSS was if the FRGs let the particular center know what dates they needed with enough notice and children, then the CDCs could accommodate their meetings.
"By having this focus group, it lets the families know that they could ask this question, and it lets the CYSS know some of the FRGs needed that flexibility," Vinson said.
That's why, she said, having these focus groups are so important.
"Focus groups allow garrison-level issues to come forth and be resolved, and give garrison customers a way to be involved in improving the services they need for an equitable quality of life," Vinson said.
Vinson's goal is to have two to three focus groups per quarter, except the quarter that the garrison is hosting AFAP.
Vinson has held focus groups for Warrior Transition Unit Soldiers, family members, retirees and reservists. In the future, she will be holding focus groups for active duty, DoD civilians and teens.
Gwinn said he felt the retiree focus group discussed some important and relevant issues that may not have been brought up in other customer feedback programs.
"Every retiree has a different and unique problem that needs to be assessed to see if something can be done about it," he said.
Issues from the focus groups that cannot be resolved at the local level get turned over to the garrison to be included in the next AFAP, Vinson explained.
"This helps the AFAP process because it weeds out some of the issues that can be resolved at the garrison, which allows them to be resolved sooner, and generates more of the larger issues to be discussed and prioritized at the AFAP conference," she said.
(Editor's Note: Christine June works in the USAG Kaiserslautern Public Affairs Office).
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