Federal Daily - September 15, 2008

Using the Best Customer Services Keywords to Bolster Your NSPS Self-Assessment
By Kathryn K. Troutman. Co-author, “Writing Your NSPS Self Assessment”
How are your customer services skills as a DoD civilian or other federal employee? The National Service Personnel System (NSPS) pay-for-performance system will be evaluating some employees’ customer services experiences, based on their job objectives.

To get the good score, your accomplishments for a job objective that involves customer services should demonstrate the following benchmarks, which you can use as a checklist for communicating your customer service accomplishments—especially through the use of the underlined keywords:
Level 3—Customer Services—Pay Band 2, Contributing Factor

• Proactively communicated with customers
• Helped define their needs and obtained feedback
• Continually enhanced products and/or services
• Worked with customers to set mutually acceptable expectations
• Informed customers or relevant others of progress, changes, issues or problems
• Developed effective solutions
• Provided timely, flexible, innovative, and responsive products and/or services to customers
• High overall customer satisfaction
  

Level 5—Customer Services—Pay Band 2, Contributing Factor

• Developed innovative and useful approaches for improving or expanding products and/or services
• Resulted in highly valued services that improve overall customer satisfaction
• Took initiative to anticipate and implement effective solutions to prevent problems
• Avoided gaps in customer expectations

How to Include Customer Services Keywords to Produce an Effective Self-Assessment

Here is a job objective that involves customer support for a Navy Fleet and Family Support Program for Family Readiness Groups. This accomplishment does demonstrate Level 3 benchmark keywords. The accomplishment also covers some of Level 5 keywords as well. The keywords for customer service are underlined in the accomplishment.

Job Objective 3: Customer Support  (Contributing Factor: Customer Services)

• Provide technical expertise, consultation on policy interpretation to all customers utilizing FFSP programs to include Navy Family Ombudsman Program and Family Readiness Groups.
• Respond within one business day to all requests for Ombudsman responses, even if response is in progress or needs clarification.
• Answer all action items within one month of holding OPAG meeting.
• Schedule two webinars monthly on Ombudsman Program.

SELF-ASSESSMENT:
Job Objective 3: I have exceeded the job objective so far this rating period. I have supported ombudsman training, communications, and analysis projects efficiently and effectively designed to improve customer services. I have met and exceeded this measure.

Goal specific accomplishments include:

CREATED A NEW WEBPAGE. In a proactive effort to share materials, I suggested and received authorization to create a new Web page and made available the module and Power Point presentation for all staff.
Both the webinars and the materials were customized and very well received; the content was clear, accurate, and well-organized; both formal and informal feedback from participants and other stakeholders indicated that the material was timely, up-to-date, and helped them in the performance of their mission. We ensured that the content was tailored for a diverse audience.

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL SUPPORT WITH RESERVE FORCES. Additionally, I worked as part of a cross functional team, representing the organization effectively with professionalism with the Reserve Force Family Support Program manager and together as a team. We proposed a modified training program for reserve unit ombudsmen. I made the decision to include the recruiting command ombudsmen in this proposal because recruiting command ombudsmen were not always able to attend OBT due to funding and residing in remote locations. This additional training improved customer services for reserves military personnel and family members.

RESULT: The Reserve unit ombudsmen training made a difference in achieving objectives for the reserves forces. Overall improved customer services through improved information and training of the cross-functional team.

This job objective and NSPS self-assessment example is published with permission from the publisher, Kathryn Troutman and The Resume Place, Inc. For more information on the best NSPS keywords, and a free “NSPS Writing Tool,” go to: http://www.resume-place.com/afini/?id=8ddd6751be5ba54d9c414321b8974bc1

Kathryn Kraemer Troutman is the founder and president of The Resume Place, Inc., a service business located in Baltimore, Md., specializing in federal career training, consulting and professional federal resume and KSA writing—and now specializing in NSPS consulting, training and writing publications. She provides performance indicator keyword self-assessment samples, personal empowerment writing style, and instruction for writing accomplishments in the new book, “Writing Your NSPS Self-Assessment,” by Kathryn Troutman and Nancy Segal. Go to www.resumeplace.com for more information.

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HHS Assists with Hurricane Ike Preparations, Evacuations

The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) last week sent about 1,600 agency personnel to the Gulf Coast in preparation for Hurricane Ike’s landfall near Houston, Texas. Nearly 1 million people along the Texas coast were ordered to evacuate ahead of the storm. In preparation for the storm, HHS activated the National Disaster Medical System, a federally coordinated operation to assist state and local officials. Also, HHS Disaster Medical Assistance Teams—along with the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs—helped evacuate an estimated 200 hospital patients to other inland Texas health care facilities. Among the activated personnel are more than 550 Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) officers who are in place near the impact zone to help with post-storm recovery. All 6,000 PHSCC officers are on alert and could be moved into Texas if conditions worsen. Those on site will assist in staffing five Federal Medical Stations, each with 250 beds, set up in Texas; two are in College Station, just north of Houston, and three are in San Antonio, about 200 miles away. “The department is offering our help by making available to our state partners a wide spectrum of our health and medical resources,” HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a Sept. 11 statement. To see more, go to: www.hhs.gov/news/press/2008pres/09/20080911a.html.

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GAO Readies for Presidential Transition

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is gearing up for the 2009 presidential transition, which will mean thousands of new appointees assuming management positions in critical federal agencies. The 2009 transition will be the first in eight years. This transition is all the more critical because it is the first wartime presidential transition in 40 years, Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general, said in testimony to a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on Sept. 10. In addition, this will be the first post-9/11 transition, with a relatively new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grappling with domestic threats of terror. GAO is the lead agency in helping with the transition. “It is vitally important that leadership skills, abilities and experience be among the key criteria the new president uses to select his leadership teams in the agencies,” Dodaro said. “It is also critical that they work effectively with career executives and agency staff.” The new president also will have to contend with an anticipated federal retirement wave which will crest within the next four years, GAO said. Certain occupations—air traffic controllers and customs and border protection personnel—are projected to have particularly high rates of retirement eligibility come 2012, GAO said. To see more, go to: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=
Hearings.Detail&HearingID=906eeecb-2fe6-4766-
ab8b-ac055919f8d2.

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Report: USPS Needs to Adjust PCES, EAS Performance Indicators

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) needs to adjust evaluation indicators it uses in its pay-for-performance (PFP) program that provides salary increases and lump-sum awards for senior managers, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on Sept. 10. The PFP ratings evaluate nearly 750 Postal Career Executive Service (PCES) executives and about 71,700 other participants, most of whom are members on the Executive and Administrative Schedule (EAS), which includes postmasters, supervisors and managers, the GAO report said. Participants rely on the PFP program for their annual salary increase since they do not receive cost-of-living adjustments, step increases, or other automatic increases to their salaries. The foundation of the PFP program is a “balanced scorecard” of independently verifiable performance indicators in several areas—such as service, revenue generation, and efficiency—to align compensation with individual performance and organizational results. However, PFP indicators of timely delivery apply to less than one-fifth of mail volume. GAO recommended that—once the necessary measurement systems are successfully implemented—USPS incorporate new delivery performance indicators into the PFP program, such as indicators that cover Standard Mail and bulk First-Class Mail. To see more, go to: www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-08-996.

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