TRANSCOM’s Misleading Math Downplays Customer Satisfaction

We’ve talked a little bit about this, but we think this deserves a deeper dive – TRANSCOM seems to be downplaying satisfaction rates with the current PCS system. Interestingly enough, they also seem to be ignoring the metrics from their own public-facing dashboard when making public comments. Why?

One explanation could be that they don’t expect people to take the time to calculate all the different pieces of data. They sure don’t make it easy, and perhaps that’s the point – to fragment the numbers so people just give up and take their statements about low customer satisfaction at face value.

Well, we’ve gone ahead and broken things down and used their own data to refute their claims. 

At the 2023 Fall Personal Property Forum, TRANSCOM had a slide showing satisfaction at 74%.

Then TRANSCOM’s Andy Dawson provided info to the media saying that the customer satisfaction rate for 2023 came in at 78%, and the 2024 satisfaction so far is 83%. 

But when we compared this to the “DPS Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSS) Results – Monthly Comparison” on TRANSCOM’s website, things didn’t add up. Basic math shows that the figures they’ve been sharing with the media and Congress are simply inaccurate.

Per TRANSCOM, satisfaction should be somewhere between 78 – 83%. Guess what – the number actually comes out to 88.9%!?! 

TRANSCOM’s own data shows that satisfaction is not only significantly higher than they are saying, but their results are a lot closer to the 90% satisfaction rate found by the independent scientific survey of military families.
Whether intentional or not, lowballing the satisfaction rates among our military families does nothing but mislead our servicemembers and discount the good work being done by America’s professional movers and independent operators. Is this an intentional move to try and justify a multi-billion dollar overhaul of a moving industry that already delivers?