by
Rachel Hansen | Jun 06, 2022
A lot has changed since 2020, but customer-owners remain steadfast in their satisfaction with service and communication from Chelan PUD.
About 89 percent of survey participants said they were satisfied to very satisfied with Chelan PUD overall. That’s increase from 86 percent in 2020. The margin of error is +/-4% with a confidence level of 95%.
“Your customers are giving you a very strong vote of confidence,” said Alex Dunn, vice president of research at Strategies 360, the firm that conducted the survey.
The survey, performed every two years, helps the PUD assess customer sentiment and areas of community interest as it develops its programs and services for customer-owners. The results were presented to PUD commissioners today. (At 00:10:15 of the board recording)
More than 600 people participated in the survey. They were contacted via landline, cell phone, email and text messaging from May 4 to May 10. The surveys represented a cross-section of customer-owners that spanned different generations, ethnicities, and towns throughout Chelan County.
Customer-owners also expressed a desire for more mobile communication tools, including text and email alerts, and an online outage map. Chelan PUD published a preview of its new outage map at chelanpud.org last week, and plans are in the works to launch more customer communication tools in the next few years.
“Customer satisfaction is a key function for us as a publicly-owned utility,” General Manager Kirk Hudson said. “I think it’s clear that our customers’ expectations are changing. We’re going to have to be very innovative to keep up with change. We know we have our work cut out for us, and we’re up to the task.”
In other news, commissioners:
- Heard a summary of initial proposals submitted by developers with regards to the Fifth Street campus. (02:09:30)
- Reviewed Chelan PUD’s wildfire mitigation plan and heard recommendations on equipment upgrades that will improve reliability while also maintaining safe operations of our electrical and fiber services. (00:46:30)
- Discussed a potential interconnection agreement with Microsoft regarding a proposed data center. (02:30:03)
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