Press 'one' for human

  • Published
  • By Caitlin Lowrey
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  Anonymous emails and overwhelming lists of automated options are the unfortunate norm for most customer support today.

Not so at the Air Force Civil Engineer Center where customers' calls and emails are personally answered by a dedicated team in AFCEC's Reach-Back Center.

As former Air Force civil engineers, between them the three RBC agents, center manager Jeff Warnecke, Greg Hummel and Al Wackowski have more than 80 years of knowledge and experience.

AFCEC, headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, provides expertise and technical support to engineers at more than 160 installations worldwide.

"The reach-back center has proven to be one of our most effective resources," said AFCEC Director Joe Sciabica. "It's important that all of our customers -- warfighters to base civil engineers -- quickly get the right information they need to do their jobs. The reach-back center helps us do that."

The RBC handled more than 50,000 requests since it opened in 2005, fielding a range of questions from internal and external customers. Classified and unclassified networks are monitored from the center, providing the capability to serve customers at deployed locations, the Pentagon, major commands, bases, industry and even our sister services.

One of the goals is to lessen the workload of AFCEC's subject matter experts.

"Every answer provided to customers by our subject matter experts is captured and added to our knowledge database," said Warnecke. "If we get the same question again, we already have the answer and can provide a quicker response to the customer."

Around 80 percent of the calls received are answered through the RBC's knowledge tree, a database of up-to-date technical information in over 100 subjects. The majority of these answers are provided within two to three hours of an initial request.

When questions can't be answered through the RBC's database, one of the RBC agents forwards them to the appropriate AFCEC expert.

"If we're unable to provide the exact answer to the caller immediately, we'll track the call in our ticketing system, which generates an email so the requester knows we'll get back to them, usually within 24 to 72 hours," said Hummel. "We prioritize every request with the goal of timely response to each and every one."

Many times a caller doesn't know which person or division to contact, Warnecke said, but as a centralized hub, the RBC does. Occasionally, callers may not even know what questions to ask to solve their problem.

"We become detectives to figure out exactly what the customer needs," said Wackowski. "This is where our experience really pays off. Sometimes the answer lies beyond CE."

The RBC's customer satisfaction rating is 98-percent positive.

"I'm glad to say that the AFCEC RBC process worked perfectly," said Lt Col Dwayne McCullion, Regional Support Command-East chief engineer in Afghanistan, who recently needed a point of contact in Southwest Asia. "I was contacted by phone within three hours of my initial email request. This worked incredibly well!"

Anyone needing answers or assistance can contact the reach-back center at any time with one call or email to:

COMM: 1-850-283-6995
Toll Free: 1-888-232-3721
DSN: 523-6995
Email: AFCEC.RBC@tyndall.af.mil