(Credit: Zpryme)It’s the dead of night in mid-February 2021. Power is out. Water pipes are frozen. Outside temperatures hover in the single digits. Like an apocalyptic scene, the landscape is white and completely devoid of any hint of electric power as snow swirls through blustery winds. In spite of assurances from authorities that power will be restored soon, as far as you can tell, no relief is coming. Modern civilization has come to a grinding halt. Where do you turn, and who do you blame for this abrupt return to the Stone Age?
The above scenario is not set in some ancient Paleolithic, but rather in early 21st century hi-tech Texas. It seems incomprehensible that, in this modern age, over 100 people died in Texas as a result of statewide power and water outages.
On the heels of the historic storm, considerable attention has been paid to the power brokers, utilities, and governmental agencies who operate and regulate those industries.
Less attention has focused on the citizens of Texas, millions of whom endured hours and sometimes days of freezing temperatures without electricity, water, and, importantly, information about when to expect the return of basic services from their utilities. An article authored by the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute posted on the Zpryme website offers a surveyed portrait those desperate experiences.
At a more granular level of inquiry into the event, Zpryme recently partnered with Varuna in a survey of some 400 Texans seeking insight on customer attitudes toward their utilities before and after the winter freeze. Survey results were informative but not surprising: before the outages, 89% of Texans had electricity and 93% had water; 88% had not filed complaints with their power utility, and 88% of water customers had not filed complaints.
After the event, surprisingly, utilities were largely let off the hook, with only 24% of resident respondents placing fault for the power and water outages at utilities’ doorstep. Instead, 53% of respondents blamed ERCOT, with another 33% laying responsibility for the outages on state government. Utilities were not completely exonerated, however. Customer sentiment toward their water utilities, rated at eight or above on a 1-10 scale, decreased from 49% to 29% of favorability.
Based on survey results showing significant impact to the utility-customer relationship, the Zpryme-Varuna study posed the following question: what can utilities do to repair relationships with their customers? Their recommendations to utilities are as follows:
Hopefully these recommendations will assist utilities as they seek to reestablish trusted relationships with their customers. Full survey results are summarized in a Zpryme-Varuna infographic.
By Michael G. Albrecht, Zpryme
