Coastal Field Services has joined forces with Central Region!

In April 2017, the Coastal Regional Office in the Frontier Building in Anchorage permanently closed the lobby to customers so we could pilot the Virtual Contact Center with the Coastal Field Unit in the Frontier Building. (Unfortunately, the VCC product we were testing did not live up to expectations.)

Effective July 23th, 2018, our Coastal team officially joined forces with our Central Region team! Our Long-Term Care Unit continues to be located on the first floor in the Frontier Building and remains part of our Coastal Region team. When the Coastal lobby closed in 2017, we were able to press forward towards a plan to relocate the Coastal Field staff into Central Region (both Gambell and Muldoon offices).

The reasons for this merger:

1. The Gambell building had furnished office space available for the staff to relocate so there was minimal costs and zero construction.
2. Since the closure of the Coastal Lobby, the clients were redirected to Central Region. The Gambell and Muldoon offices are experiencing high traffic and placing additional staff in these locations will provide needed resources to assist customers in the lobby and in the non- lobby as well.
3. As the regions are moved into statewide non-lobby work, the Gambell location will primarily be a lobby driven office; however, this will be reassessed when our backlog is diminished and our timeliness has improved.
4. As the Virtual Contact Center is pursued and refined, some staff from all regions may be reallocated to the VCC team. Until this project is completed, the Coastal staff combined with the Central Region staff will give this office enough resources to support each other, as well as our customers.

The Coastal Region staff continue to report to Marjorie and the Central Region staff to Mark. Our managers and supervisors will be focusing on inclusion for meetings and daily track assignments. The leadership teams have worked together to ensure as smooth as possible transition - We thank them for this! Another shout-out is given to Jessica B. (Administrative Operations Manager) and her team, along with Danny T (AA II in Field Services), Cilla (AA II in Central Region) and Jackie (AA II in the Mat-Su Region) for their behind the scenes work. And the not so behind the scenes work!

We really appreciate these teams working together -- Many humble thanks to all of you as we continue to work through changes!

Tammie and Aimee