The Moving and Storage industry moves over 300,000 servicemembers every year –a point of enormous pride and patriotism for American Trucking Associations’ Moving and Storage Conference members.
After each move, military families are asked to complete a satisfaction survey based on a 5-point scale, with a response of 3, 4 or 5 deemed “satisfactory.” An honest and straightforward reading of the survey data from Department of Defense and USTRANSCOM shows nearly 93% of servicemembers who moved with a professional moving company under the current DP3 program were satisfied with their move.
However, in an attempt to undermine our industry and bolster DOD’s argument that a new Government Household Goods Contract is necessary to correct for poor moving satisfaction rates, DOD and TRANSCOM recently published a blog post falsely claiming only 77% of military customers are satisfied with their moving experience.
This difference is significant.
In fact, TRANSCOM measures “overall customer satisfaction” - a departure from previous measurement procedure. Under this system, if 100% of customers gave a 4 out of 5 rating on their satisfaction survey, TRANSCOM would report a 75% Overall Satisfaction Rating even though 100% of customers have reported they were satisfied. As a result, TRANSCOM is intentionally misleading service members and the public to portray a systematic problem with service members’ moves when one does not exist.
This misrepresentation comes at a time when TRANSCOM is transitioning to the new Global Household Goods Contract, which centralizes service members’ moves under one umbrella contract and is beset with many serious flaws. These flaws are likely to result in artificial capacity constraints for military moves, among other issues – a problem likely to be compounded by DOD disparaging the very movers they need to participate in the GHC.
Make no mistake: We want to work with DOD and TRANSCOM, and we want to continue to serve our nation’s men and women in uniform and their families. But to do that, we need to be honest with one another. That requires TRANSCOM to be transparent with customer survey data from movers who do not participate in the GHC, as well as acknowledging the GHC as currently being implemented has flaws that must be addressed.
We look forward to working with them to ensure that all service members and their families are satisfied with their moves – by any measure.