Additionally, we conduct a tracker among customers — both business and residential — who reach out to a call center because of discrete power interruptions.

For two reasons, these interactions can have significant downstream consequences for perceptions of utilities through measurements like the JD Power index for that category.

1. Power interruptions comprise the highest predictor of JD Power ratings among utilities; more interruptions mean lower JD Power scores.
2. The management of the communications about those interruptions can mitigate the negative satisfaction effects of a power interruption—from real-time status notifications on mobile devices, outage maps on the web site, to one-on-one conversations with a customer service rep at the call center.

Third Party Data Fusion

Utilities maintain a wealth of data about their customers’ kWh usage, billing rates, and other metrics specifically related to power usage. Appending decisionPoints^TM data to customers’ data in an analytics data mart unlocks additional attributes about utility customers that are not typically considered in analysis. These additional variables — up to 800 of them — can be used for additional analysis on surveys, usage cohorts, and many other analytic applications.

Proprietary Research Panels

For many years, DDG has built and maintained custom, opt-in panels of both residential and commercial utility customers on behalf of our power company clients. These panels range from a few thousand to many tens of thousands of research panelists. The utilities have found that with DDG’s custom panel approach, they are able to conduct exponentially more research than through traditional sampling methods using external sample vendors.

In addition, the panels serve as another important touchpoint for utility customers. In this case, consumers realize that the power company is listening to them, and their panel membership represents their chance to count.