Study to electric utilities: Tell businesses the truth

J.D. Power and Associates released a report today on business customers’ reactions to power outages and outage management. While a bit happier and less emotional, overall, than their residential counterparts, there still seems to be a lesson in all these numbers: Dear utility, don’t shorten the outage time.

The J.D. Power and Associates 2011 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study is based on interviews with people from 17,000 U.S. businesses that spend $500-$50,000 a month on those power bills. Those study Associates measured customer satisfaction looking at: power quality and reliability; billing and payment; corporate citizenship; price; communications; and, of course, customer service.

If the surveyed business had an outage, the average satisfaction rating was 729 out of 1,000 points---about a middling “C” grade for those of us still judging things based on old school report cards. And that “C” was only if the power clicked back on by the time told them. If the utility stretched the outage (for whatever reason, even those beyond their control) past the hour given by the utility, that grade plummeted to 576. (That’s a whopping 150-point plunge, and an “F” on the school report card scale.)

So, the lesson here: Be accurate. Tell the truth. Don’t give the best-guess estimate. The customer wants to know when it’s really going to be back up and making them money again. If it’s going to be a long time, be honest. And, let them know why.

The survey noted: Among business customers who contact their utility for information about an outage, satisfaction levels are highest among those who received at least three points of information. Satisfaction is lowest among customers who only received one piece of information.

“While causes of power outages may be outside the control of electric providers, they do have the ability to establish highly satisfying procedures for making adequate outage information available to customers,” said Jeff Conklin, senior director of the energy utility practice at J.D. Power and Associates. “Particularly for business customers, time is money. Providing accurate and comprehensive information about outages can help these customers make contingency plans and effectively plan resumption of their operations.”

The second lesson here: The customers expect you to know. True, you may not have the shiny smart grid intelligence to even get a bead on where the outage is without sending out some guys in a truck to just drive around the darkened spots. But, customers don’t know that. They hear a lot about the smart grid; they think you have one. They think there’s a robot or magic computer connection on that line. They believe that the very moment power goes out, you know. And they also believe you should know how long it takes to get that power back on. Whether or not you think that’s fair, that’s the business world you’re working in these days.

The study also noted a decline in overall satisfaction among business people with their power companies---not much, about four points, but that decline happened across a number of areas with the biggest dips in power quality and reliability (7 points) and customer service (5 points). Do you really have worse power than you did last year? Of course not. Do you have worse customer service? Perhaps. Either way, what’s important here is, again, what customers believe. They believe you know more than you are saying about outages. They believe your power is not as awesome as it was before, and they think your customer service isn’t so hot.

You can fix those beliefs with some extra time and extra communication, but the key is to be truthful and accurate---even letting them know when you don’t know. Sometimes honesty really is the best policy.