WELCOME to the SEC Customer Focus Group

SEC continually identifies customers, monitors and tracks customer needs, and facilitates information exchange between SEC and the user community.

Project Team: Barbara Poppe and Larry Combs

Although SEC has served customers since 1965, we are committed to improving our service. Currently, we are making changes in delivery and in types of data and services, which has require that we have significant communication with our customers. The Customer Focus Group was designed to keep SEC focused on issues involving customers.

The major activities of the SEC Customer Focus Group:

Issue a Quarterly Newsletter to Customers

A regular (quarterly) newsletter keeps users informed about SEC and space weather incidents and products. While the information flows in one direction with a newsletter, the response to that news has been significant in that users respond to questions posed, request more information and publications, and are aware of changes to products or services. (SEC User Notes)

Host User-Researcher-Vendor Conferences

The Space Weather Week conferences have been held annually in late spring. Users interested in all aspects of space weather impacts attend, the largest interests being in satellite, radio communications, and navigation fields. The research community and vendors of space weather services, along with various government agencies, also attend, and it is the interaction of all these groups that make the conference unique and important. The conference is co-sponsored by Air Force Research Laboratory,  NSF Division of Atmospheric Science, and NASA Space Sciences Division.

For more about the current conference, refer to the Space Weather Week page.

Increase the contact with users

SEC staff members attend conferences and meetings of industries interested in the space environment, such as the Institute of Navigation's 50th annual meeting and the biennial Hughes Commercial Satellite Owner/Operators' Conference.

At every such meeting, SEC gains new information about our customers, and we are able to deliver information about space weather services to industrial users. In turn, the information we get from users on their use of our data gives knowledge of our user, which in turn lets us deliver better service.

Foster a space weather private industry

Because we are not able to provide all the services that our users want, we are working with value-added vendors who will use our data and products to develop commercially available products. This goal is strongly supported by the NOAA directives to work with the private sector and make government resources available to the public.

Of interest to users of space weather services is the listing of vendor who can provide services: Commercial Space Weather Service Providers
Of interest to vendors of space weather services is this page: Vendor Support from SEC.

Improve Products and Delivery

Both new data availability and modern delivery methods have allowed improvements to customer service. We are committed to making delivery efficient, inexpensive for both the government and the customer, and extensive in what is offered. Some of the areas in which you can see these changes are:

Continue to build the materials to respond to user needs

We have published short "Topics" papers that describe specific aspects of the space environment for those users who are new to their field or are not knowledgeable about the science behind effects that they monitor. Users will find other materials developed for education of the public and K-12 students  to be useful as background information. These materials are listed (and often available electronically) on our Web site under Education.

SEC is very proud to have earned the Secretary of Commerce's Customer Service Excellence Award for "Putting Customers First." This award was received from Secretary Brown in Washington on November 22, 1994

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