• Archives
• Text

May 28, 2009

Utility Customer Satisfaction: A Faith-Based Initiative?

By John Egan

A Confused and Inconclusive CSAT World

Interviews with utility executives and managers about how their companies have benefited from high customer satisfaction, or been hurt by low customer satisfaction, yielded the following points:

• “If you want to get anything done at the PUC, you’d better have good, quality customer satisfaction”
• “It reduces friction with customers.”
• “It makes customers more willing to cut you some slack when you do mess up.”
• “It helps us run our business the way we want.”
• “It helps the commission look more favorably, and perhaps act more rapidly, on a strategic transaction.”
• “It improves employee morale.”
• “It helps us attract better-quality employees.”
• “We can recover in rates many of the improvements we implement.”
• “It reduces waste, lowers costs, and improves processes.”
• “It serves to confirm our decision making.”
• “It positions us more favorably with vendors.”

Two sharply different rationales from utility leaders and managers exist on the question of whether and to what degree their companies benefit from higher customer satisfaction. Utilities with a long track record of first-quartile customer satisfaction performance say they don’t pay a lot of attention to the various studies. They don’t do what they do to win awards. They see customer satisfaction as an outer expression of sound business practices and a sincere commitment to serve customers—an internal driver.

Comments from utilities with fourth-quartile scores have a harder, more skeptical edge: “What’s the return? Why should I make that investment?” or “We see it as something that’s nice to have, but not mission-critical. Besides, doesn’t it increase costs? We’re trying to reduce costs.”

The best summation comes from Grant Yoshihara, managing director at NW Natural, a natural gas utility headquartered in Portland, Ore. He said, “If you run your business in a way that dissatisfies your customers, you subject yourself to more risks. More things could go wrong, particularly in the regulatory arena. Eventually those things will catch up with you.”

—John Egan (johnegan1959@gmail.com, 720-949-4906) is founder and principal of Egan Energy Communications, which works with utilities to improve the impact and lower the cost of their stakeholder communications. He was a former research director at E Source, media relations supervisor at Salt River Project, and reporter at The Energy Daily.

---