By Jeff Erlichman

SEWP Has A CH(a)RMing New Deputy

Customer service isn’t only for government customers. It is for SEWP contractors as well.

“Last year we announced a new position – the Contract Holder Relationship Manager,” said Joanne Woytek, SEWP PM. Pronounced “CH(a)RM”, their job is to be the advocate for the Contract Holder and help them implement the contract correctly. “But if the contractor is doing something incorrectly, the CHRM makes sure they know how to do it. Their job is to make sure all the performances are great and exceptional,” said Woytek.

For contractors, the CHRM is a customer service manager for contractors. Also customers like that because they have a single point of contact. The job has grown so much in the last year that now there is a deputy CHRM said Woytek. “With 40 some companies involved we want to keep the interaction going strong. What we added this year is that the CHRM has to meet one-on-one every year with each of those companies,” said Woytek.

So that’s 40 meetings every year. “He’s done about 25% of them since we started this,” Woytek noted. “They are not with a group. So they are able to be a little more frank about things.”

“We usually have a long list of ideas out there that we can talk about. The more we can help industry that should lower their costs, which should lower the need for them to charge higher prices,” said Woytek.

“To have them stay in business, we need to be sure that we don’t overburden them with unnecessary requirements. We want to alleviate any burden as much as we can so that they are concentrating on giving us the best value for our money and are not charging more just to meet some reporting requirement.”