DLA's customer service lax

To better address shortcomings in its mission of delivering supplies, the Defense Logistics Agency should strengthen customer feedback. A General Accounting Office report noted several failings in the DLA's delivery of parts to military units, and it recommended ways to minimize these shortcomings through a more comprehensive plan of customer service.

The report, "Defense Logistics: Improving Customer Feedback Could Enhance DLA's Delivery of Services Accountability Integrity Reliability," is available online at www.gao.gov. The report found that DLA lacked an integrated method of obtaining feedback on customer satisfaction.

The agency fails to provide its users with a single point of contact. The study also found that customers felt the DLA does an adequate job delivering routine items, but does not provide timely status on mission-critical replacement parts, often causing equipment to be offline for unnecessarily long periods of time. Although the agency is beginning an initiative to improve customer support, it still can adopt best practices from the corporate sector, the report said.