Cali Utility Learns Painful PR Lesson

There’s no doubt that Pacific Gas and Electric screwed up when they didn’t react immediately to growing complaints about the utility’s massive smart metering program. But the fault wasn’t with the meters, it was with the marketing.

The program itself is actually quite efficient, with only one percent of the 5.5 million meters installed having any sort of glitch. A margin for error that small is rare in any business. Heck, even those consumer opinion polls have a 3-5 percent margin of error, and they aren’t even putting together any technology. So, one percent is positively amazing. Unfortunately for Pacific Gas and Electric, though, that one percent translates to about 50,000 people---a number of which were not very happy about being lumped into that problematic percentile. And so they tattled … a lot. And they went above the utility’s head to daddy regulator with that tattling.

Now, every customer at some time has had an issue with their power company, even executives with the power company: the bill’s too high or the lights are off or that pole transformer in your backyard is flaming (and your lights are off). But, for the most part, you see a problem, make a phone call, the company fixes it---and everyone moves on with their lives. It’s efficient and simple, but it’s a system based entirely on reaction.

Reaction doesn’t work well in keeping emotions from boiling over, and reactions can make a boiling emotion explode as well. There is no moving on or fixing a problematic smart meter in the mind of an angry customer once the seed of negativity is planted. All he knows is that his power used to be cheaper and now this shiny newfangled, expensive doohickey is making it uber-expensive (in his way of thinking). And, when he complains, the power company refuses to take it out.

This is where community outreach really is key---and really was lacking in the case of Pacific Gas and Electric. They were doing everything right; they really were. But, they didn’t advertise that fact. They didn’t trumpet and promote and show customers how great the smart meters were for them individually. Nor did they warn about small problems that would arise with any new program. If consumers had been given the facts, the potential issues, and a lot of happy metering thoughts beforehand, would Pacific Gas and Electric have been forced to answer to the California Public Utilities Commission and the state Senate about that tidal wave (in their thinking) of customer issues? Perhaps not.

Community outreach isn’t new to utilities. A lot of them have learned, over the years, that right-of-way management and tree programs, which often involve on-site interaction with individual customers, goes more smoothly with warning: a phone call, a smattering of pamphlets stuck in doors that say “We’ll be here on Thursday.” It keeps the “freak out” factor to a minimum. No one runs outside in his bathrobe spilling coffee and screaming at a surprise work crew pruning his precious pecan tree if he knows that crew’s coming and that the pruning is necessary.

However, that concept hasn’t yet been applied to the programs for implementing smart grid technology, and it should be. More awareness equals less scary. That’s always the case. And no company should rely on the consumer to be interested enough to go search out that information themselves. A consumer motivated to research is usually in one of two emotional states: happily looking for a secondhand Wii or really, really angry about his bill. And, let’s be honest, no one happily shops for a smart meter. Instead, that smart meter is thrust upon him. So, shower---heck, pour---on the information. Saturate.

Pacific Gas and Electric has learned their lesson. They are working on new options for customers concerned about their smart meters, including adding more customer service representatives, making metering information more clear and creating a dedicated answer center just for smart meters. These are all absolutely the right track; it just would have been easier to be proactive and nipped this issue in the bud by starting out this program with those things in place---because new will always be scary to a customer until it’s not new.

Let’s hope that other utilities learn from this as each one considers, pilots and implements a smart grid program: Work on the technology. Absolutely. Figure out the financing … but, first, over inform the consumer, make them so aware of the smart grid and the smart meter that each could recite tomes on the subject. It may seem silly, but it could save a lot of headaches dealing with regulators because, as Pacific Gas and Electric found out recently, each and every angry consumer is also an angry constituent.