Study: Utility Customer Satisfaction Reaches All-Time High

Market Strategies International has published its latest Cogent Reports™study, Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement™: Residential, which shows utility customer satisfaction in America is at an all-time high.

According to the study, U.S. electric and natural gas utilities posted an average score of 767 on a 1,000-point maximum scale. However, there is a 138-point gap between the highest and lowest-scoring utilities.

As part of the study, surveys among 58,556 residential electric, natural gas and combination utility customers of the 130 largest U.S. utility companies (based on residential customer counts) were conducted. Utilities were graded in two areas: The Service Satisfaction index, which comprises utility customer ratings on safety, reliability, billing, payment, and customer and field service, and the Customer Effort index, which is a modeled measure of how easy it is to interact with utilities across a number of utility-customer touchpoints.

“Utilities deserve accolades for the great work they have done improving operations. But customer expectations continue to grow each time utilities improve service,” said Chris Oberle, senior vice president at Market Strategies International. “The next challenge for utility managers is to create convenient and easy experiences for customers. The best utilities are conducting customer journey and touchpoint enhancements that reduce customers’ efforts.”

Other key findings include:

  • Satisfaction with outage handling has increased significantly for electric utilities
  • Satisfaction with safety events has increased significantly for natural gas utilities
  • Only 10% of customers think their utility can keep its system safe from cyber or terrorist attacks
  • 40% of customers think their utility can keep their personal information safe
  • 85% of low-income customers do or want to select their own payment due date
  • Paper bills remain the most-used billing channel while digital payment offerings cannibalize each other, with mobile payments gaining share over online and electronic billing
  • Email and phone are the most preferred customer service channels at most utilities

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