NRCS Customer Service Efficiency
Lorrie Boyer
Reporter
“We've got a situation right now where we can send soil scientists out and they have to take a picture, but they don't have a phone, and then when they do take a picture, they have to come back to the office and they have to upload it, or they have to go back out and get a handwritten piece of paper and then bring it back to the office. I had offices that serve territories the size of Alabama, so if you want, another thing I really learned in California was how to cover geography, our ability to have a platform that's integrated, that connects all of our necessary systems on the back end, so that every application can dovetail into that, I think, is going to allow us to be out there in the field with the farmer. How many times that we are designing conservation plans and the farmers then looking at what they want to do. It'd be really nice to be able to do that in real time. To be able to sit there, input on an iPad, sit with the farmer. Say, Well, if we do this, we do that. Drive around Ranch, okay, get the pictures, take a look at that, populate a conservation plan, and go, What do you think you want to do right now, as opposed to go back, do this over the next few weeks, come back out. Go back, come back out. I think we can reduce that friction and have a better experience and interface with our customer.”
Ultimately, she says it allows soil scientists the flexibility to do their job, whether they're in the field or in the office.
“Where we can be in the field, where we can integrate different documents from different partners. So even if we're working with our conservation districts, where they're working with a third party partner, where we can have a file that is live and can keep track of that farmer, and having the mobile infrastructure to be able to go out and do that.”
NRCS Chief, Aubrey Bettencourt.
