US Utility Customers Remain Satisfied, but Always Room for Improvement

Not often are electric utilities painted in a positive light in the public sphere. But the latest survey from J.D. Power suggests many US utilities are doing things right, and it has a 6-year upward trend in residential customer satisfaction scores to back that up.

Where Do the Positives Come From?

Utility managers pay close attention to these J.D. Power surveys, so it is worth noting what the new survey results reveal:

• Overall satisfaction averages jumped 39 points this year compared to 2016, rising from 680 to 719 points (on a 1,000-point scale).
• Utilities showed a 48-point increase for price factor, increasing from 611 points in 2016 to 659 points in 2017. Note: price factor satisfaction tends to rise as customers rate their utility higher for ease of understanding pricing, total monthly cost, and pricing fairness.
• A 7-point increase (66% vs. 59% in 2016) in the number of customers receiving critical information during power outages—such as the cause, number of customers affected, and estimates when power will be restored.

Among the factors driving the improving satisfaction scores in 2017 is the notion that utilities are investing in infrastructure to increase safety and grid reliability (68% of respondents compared with 63% in 2016). DTE Energy is just one of many utilities that have made this kind of an infrastructure investment in recent years that can pay off in terms of customers having a more upbeat impression of their utility.

Another finding from the survey is an increase in electronic bill paying, with 20% of respondents saying this is how they pay their bill compared to 17% in last year’s survey. This trend is welcome news to many utilities (for example, ComEd) that have been encouraging customers to move away from paper bills as a way to lower utility costs for some time.

Alignment of Mobility and Satisfaction

Increasingly, customers access utility websites from mobile devices. More than a third of the respondents (35%) say they visit their utility’s website from a mobile device, which is a 15% increase from 2016. SRP in Arizona is one such utility that has scored highly in satisfaction with its website, ranking number one in a different J.D. Power survey.

Utilities take plenty of abuse from customers when the power is out, the bill is wrong, or a rate increase seems unwarranted. Nonetheless, the 6-year upward satisfaction trend is hard to argue with, and given the increasing pressure to simultaneously modernize the grid and keep bad cyber actors at bay, utilities do a good job overall. Yes, one’s utility can seem large and impersonal at times, but for most of us, these companies and their people deserve credit for keeping the lights on and providing power at reasonable prices. They are not perfect. There is continual room for improvement on many levels and when they mess up, customers should complain and have issues resolved quickly. By and large, though, utilities get the job done.