Despite the tense situation in the power industry and thenumerous power alerts so far this summer, a new study by J.D. Powerand Associates and Navigant Consulting found that electric utilitycustomer satisfaction actually has improved this year and theaverage length of the longest power outage declined. Nationwideabout 65% of residential customers reported that they are extremelyor very satisfied with their electric utility provider.

The four regional leaders in customer satisfaction were PotomacElectric Power in the East; LG&E Energy, parent of LouisvilleGas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities in the Midwest; MemphisGas, Light and Water in the South and the Salt River Project in theWest. Salt River Project, which serves the Phoenix area, posted thehighest customer satisfaction ranking in the nation with a score of118. It ranked high in all categories but distinguished itself incustomer service, power reliability/quality and billing/payment.

One of the main conclusions of the 2000 Electric UtilityResidential Customer Satisfaction Study, which was based onresponses from 24,000 residential customers, was that the largest75 electric utilities in four regions of the U.S. are doing abetter job this year of quickly restoring power when outages affectresidential customers. The average length of the longest poweroutage was reduced to five hours from 17 last year.

“Although customers report more power outages, the averageduration is considerably shorter this year,” said Jim Gaz, directorof energy services at J.D. Power and Associates. “More importantly,customers feel they are much better informed about outages. Takentogether with improved ratings on customer service representativesand faster caller answering times, it’s not surprising that so manyutilities were able to improve satisfaction levels.”

The study also found that customer needs are changing andreliability, power quality and billing/payment are issues that havegrown in importance for customers.

“Company image and price/value are still dominant factors forthe electric industry, but power quality and reliability,billing/payment and customer service have more of an impact withthis year’s respondents, collectively representing more than 82million households,” said Gaz.

Power prices nationwide remained flat at $88/month on average.Delaware and South Carolina have the highest bills with customerspaying $112/month on average, whereas Minnesota and Utah have thelowest monthly averages at about $60. Customers in Alabama reportedthe most outages per year at eight, followed by Utah and WestVirginia with seven. Customers in Rhode Island reported the fewestoutages with three per year. And customers in Michigan reported thelongest outages, averaging nearly 13 hours.

If given a choice, 17% of the residential customers said theywould definitely or probably switch suppliers – with no significantdifference in price. However, 39% of the unhappy customers saidthey would switch without a lower price offering. The study alsofound that it might take a 15% cut in prices to encourage themajority of customers to be very or somewhat likely to switchsuppliers.

Additional details about the study are available athttps://csi.navigantconsulting.com

Rocco Canonica

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