The utility and its customer: A complex relationship
- Ontario Hydro, Toronto (Canada)
- Wales Behavioral Assessment, Solana Beach, CA (United States)
Developing methods of tracking customer satisfaction for utilities presents major problems since the customer reacts to the utility on many different levels. The more obvious are in relation to the product (energy) and the services the company provides. More recently there has been talk of the {open_quotes}brand{close_quotes} elements of the company-customer relationship. Ontario Hydro (OH) has developed a method utilizing four separate domains for measuring and tracking customer satisfaction: product, service, competitiveness, and institutional relationships. Ontario Hydro conducted a survey of over 1200 residential customers. The respondents received a detailed in-person survey of their estimation of the importance of specific aspects of customer service and their view of Ontario Hydro`s performance on those same issues. The data yielded 28 factors covered a large variety of separate concerns: customer service, and treatment of customers to export policy. OH concluded that the utility`s relationship with its customer is more complex than the susual customer-vendor interaction. A utility not only provides a product and a service, it has a institutional personality and provides an absolutely necessary product under an exclusive franchise and executes government policy as a regulated monopoly. It was found that customers are sensitive to all of these attributes.
- Research Organization:
- Electric Power Research Inst. (EPRI), Palo Alto, CA (United States); Synergic Resources Corp., Bala-Cynwyd, PA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 102711
- Report Number(s):
- EPRI-TR-104558; TRN: 95:001847-0021
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Nov 1994; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings: Sixth Biennial Marketing Research Symposium: Blue sky to bottom line{hor_ellipsis}marketing research, customer value and utility performance; PB: 481 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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