Case study

A large US utility

Performing a customer satisfaction survey for key accounts

PA’s client, a large US utility, conducts an annual customer satisfaction study of its key customers to assess company performance in important areas of service, determine incentive compensation, and set employee goals.

The client asked PA to redesign its existing phone survey for use over the Internet. The redesign also included adding questions to collect the data necessary for applying PA’s Customer-Oriented Operations Optimization (CO3) approach. This approach gives managers specific information on how to change staff performance and service delivery targets to increase customer satisfaction. After approval of the final survey, PA implemented the Web-based survey of 4,865 key accounts in the utility’s service area, tailoring the questions to allow for respondents’ different locations. 

Preliminary findings suggest that the change in the survey implementation method from telephone to the Internet might have had an effect on satisfaction ratings. PA conducted a follow-up phone survey to test whether this was the case. Although a degree of mode-related bias may have influenced the survey, PA demonstrated that the decline was real.

PA gathered information that captured customer expectations as well as actual service received and then analyzed the data to estimate which attributes of customer service are most closely related to overall satisfaction. This enables managers to know customers’ current level of satisfaction for a category (such as electric service reliability), for specific attributes of that category (such as momentary disturbances and outages), and the full effect on satisfaction when the level of service delivery for each attribute changes. This dynamic level of information enables PA and the client to conduct 'what if' scenario analyses to compare the effects on customer satisfaction of planned changes in service delivery.