{"id":37074,"date":"2019-09-01T17:04:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-01T17:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/09\/01\/nearly-a-year-later-success-at-navy-call-center\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:38:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:38:59","slug":"nearly-a-year-later-success-at-navy-call-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2019\/09\/01\/nearly-a-year-later-success-at-navy-call-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly a year later, success at Navy call center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When Virginia-based Personnel Specialist 1st Class Stacie W. Carrero reached out to the new MyNavy Career Center in Tennessee, she wasn\u2019t a rookie in the sea service\u2019s vast but often fragmented human resources system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assigned to Naval Sea Systems Command\u2019s Fleet Introduction Team in Norfolk, Carrero brought 16 years of experience along on her phone call, including stints on board the guided-missile destroyer Forrest Sherman, aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, amphibious assault ship Belleau Wood and a tour with the Wildcats of Strike Fighter Squadron 131.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Command Pay\/Personnel Administrator was having trouble getting training verified on her Electronic Service Record. On Carrero\u2019s screen, it looked like her efforts had been successful, but when she went back into her file, the system didn\u2019t seem to record the qualification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she rang the MNCC contact center<\/a> in Millington, which is open every minute of every day so that sailors across the globe can get help on a wide range of personnel glitches, everything from 60-year-old retired reservists who need to start drawing their pensions to sailors trying to get their packages to an advancement board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The call center opened in September 2018 to great fanfare, promising a tiered system that linked sailors to the online self-service MyNavy Portal<\/a>, front line customer service representatives who could help with other inquiries and, in the background, subject matter experts who could get to the heart of any problem and solve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Carrero said it works. The agent on the other line saw that the training had been entered into the system on her end, but it wasn\u2019t reflected on Carrero\u2019s screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agent didn\u2019t fob off the work to a clerk at a regional personnel support detachment or route it to a cubicle where the request would languish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe put me on the phone with the section that does the ESR verification. I went one-on-one with them,\u201d said Carrero, who estimates the bug was fixed in under 45 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A customer service agent speaks with a sailor by telephone at the MyNavy Career Center (MNCC) contact center at Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn. Sailors can contact the MNCC at 1-833-330-MNCC, email at askmncc@navy.mil, or at MyNavy Portal at my.navy.mil. (Doug Bedford\/Navy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Moments like that make Rear Adm. Jeffrey W. Hughes<\/a> very happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A career naval aviator, the deputy chief of naval personnel is one of the top Navy leaders pushing to modernize its Industrial Age personnel system to help sailors, retirees, veterans and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making Millington\u2019s MNCC call center work is an important reform in the Navy\u2019s Sailor 2025 initiative, which uses the latest software and practices borrowed from the private sector to drag the sea service\u2019s HR system into the 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Hughes, that means whittling down 62 different personnel systems to one streamlined program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe big journey we\u2019ve been on, probably for the last couple of years, is really restructuring all of our processes around the customer,” he told Navy Times. “How do we make our processes customer-oriented?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hughes wanted the call center to handle hundreds of thousands of transactions annually with precision and speed while offering sailors greater flexibility when interacting with the Navy\u2019s personnel system, improvements he assumed would hike customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey want it done quick,” he said. “They want it done right the first time. And they want a customer experience that they are used to, that they\u2019re receiving in the private, commercial sector today. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re striving to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the changes involved super-sizing regional personnel support detachments in Memphis, Norfolk and Great Lakes to help sailors there while increasingly consolidating key \u201clines of effort\u201d into the Millington operations, creating a system that\u2019s similar to what they experience when buying airline tickets or car insurance, reserving a hotel room and banking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Navy could pull it off, the innovations would free sailors and their commanders to refocus valuable time on training for war or spending time with their families, not hacking through red tape. Those improvements may also boost retention.<\/p>\n\n\n\t