Communications with customers during power outages is one of the areas where electric utilities can make a hard impact on customer satisfaction, either positive or negative. Get customers the accurate information they crave, and you can win them over; leave them in the proverbial as well as literal darkness and, well, they’re not going to have a high opinion of you.
Issues that impact the utility customer experience raise lots of questions. In this case:
- What does it take to get the appropriate message out to customers?
- How do you get all facets of the organization on board?
- What do customers really expect?
J.D. Power has profiled the practices of the highest performing utilities in the realm of outage communications and surveyed thousands of customers nationwide on both their experiences during power outages as well as their preferences for receiving information when outages occur.
Combined, the Voice of the Customer data and featured utility practices make for a powerful educational tool with actionable takeaways. Learning, for example, that 93% of customers last year said they wanted to know during an outage when their power would be back on but only 56% of customers who experienced a prolonged outage got that information identifies a key area utilities need to work on (Figure 1). Getting profiles of how four utilities organized to provide this information significantly enhances the value to the reader.
J.D. Power has also featured some of the best practices in first call/contact resolution (FCR), price communications and programs, key account service, electronic billing and payment efforts and social media.
These are just some of the topics in the new Customer Impact Series of reports from J.D. Power. Launched last year in response to client inquiries regarding what it is the high performers do well, the reports feature a deep dive into customer satisfaction study data to reveal customer concerns, preferences and trends as well as case studies of how high-performing utilities are addressing their customers.
Visit J.D. Power’s Online Store to view contents of the Outage Communications Preferences report or to shop for other Customer Impact Reports by visiting https://store.jdpower.com/collections/energy. You may also subscribe to the Customer Impact Reports Series to gain access to all of the reports for a bundled price. For more information, contact Dennis Smith at 404-655-3727 or email dennis.smith@jdpa.com.
