WORLD-GENERATION MAY/JUNE 2015 V.27 #2
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PERSPECTIVE
The American Customer Satisfaction
Index (ACSI) is an independent national
benchmark of customer satisfaction with
the quality of products and services avail-
able to household consumers in the
United States.
Following another harsh winter, cus-
tomer satisfaction with gas and electric
service providers is down 2.7 percent to
an ACSI score of 74.3 on a 0-100 scale,
according to the American Customer
Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
“Higher cost tends to weaken custom-
er satisfaction, particularly when spend-
ing is not discretionary, as is the case
with commodities such as energy,” says
Claes Fornell, ACSI Chairman and found-
er. “It is not as much the cost of energy
per se, but that usage was high and took
a bigger bite out of household income.”
The ACSI report covers customer sat-
isfaction with three utility categories
(cooperative, investor-owned and munici-
pal) and two health care service indus-
tries (hospitals and ambulatory care),
along with consumer shipping and the
mail services of the U.S. Postal Service
(USPS).
INVESTOR-OWNED UTILITIES: RISING COST
OF ELECTRICITY AND NATURAL GAS
DAMPENS SATISFACTION
Household satisfaction with investor-
owned utilities falls 1.3 percent to an ACSI
score of 74. Among the largest investor-
owned utilities, the highest-scoring com-
panies are both natural gas suppliers –
Atmos Energy (ACSI score of 82) and
CenterPoint Energy (81).
FirstEnergy is next at 79 and posts the
largest gain (+8%); it now ties Sempra
Energy. Dominion Resources, PPL and
NiSource all come in at 78, followed by
Southern Company, Entergy (+1%) and
NextEra Energy (+1%) at 77. The only
other providers to improve are Xcel
Energy (+1% to 76), Public Service
Enterprise Group (+3% to 72), and PG&E
(+1% to 71).
Most utilities have moved in the oppo-
site direction, with DTE Energy and
Exelon deteriorating the most (-8%). Duke
Energy (-6%) also declines, while
Eversource Energy (formerly Northeast
Utilities), hurt particularly hard by winter
storms, falls 7 percent to the industry low
of 66.
MUNICIPAL UTILITIES: SMALLER
COMPANIES HIT HARDEST; SALT RIVER
PROJECT MAINTAINS LEAD
Most large municipal utilities improve
from a year ago, but smaller providers,
which make up a majority of the market,
drop to a combined ACSI score of 73. The
Salt River Project (SRP) leads in customer
satisfaction for a fifth straight year, edging
up 1 percent to 80, and CPS Energy advanc-
es 3 percent to 77. Meanwhile, the Los
Angeles Department of Water & Power
(LADWP) slips 1 percent and scores far
below for customer satisfaction at 68.
COOPERATIVE UTILITIES: BEST IN
CATEGORY
Smaller rural cooperative utilities hold
a strong lead over the other utility catego-
ries, but slip 1.2 percent to an ACSI score
of 80. Despite a 1 percent downturn,
Touchstone Energy Cooperatives remains
one of the Index’s top-scoring energy utili-
ties at 80, followed by the aggregate of
smaller co-ops (-3% to 78).
ABOUT ACSI
The American Customer Satisfaction
Index (ACSI) is a national economic indi-
cator of customer evaluations of the quali-
ty of products and services available to
household consumers in the United
States.
The ACSI uses data from interviews
with roughly 70,000 customers annually
as inputs to an econometric model for
analyzing customer satisfaction with
more than 300 companies in 43 industries
and 10 economic sectors, including vari-
ous services of federal and local govern-
ment agencies.
ACSI results are released throughout
the year, with all measures reported on a
scale of 0 to 100. ACSI data have proven
to be strongly related to a number of
essential indicators of micro and macro-
economic performance. For example,
firms with higher levels of customer sat-
isfaction tend to have higher earnings
and stock returns relative to competitors.
Stock portfolios based on companies
that show strong performance in ACSI
deliver excess returns in up markets as
well as down markets.
At the macro level, customer satisfac-
tion has been shown to be predictive of
both consumer spending and GDP
growth.
ACSI and its logo are Registered
Marks of the University of Michigan,
licensed worldwide exclusively to
American Customer Satisfaction Index
LLC with the right to sublicense.
ACSI SCORES UTILITIES
BY CLAES FORNELL
Claes Fornell
ACSI Chairman and Founder
