Customer satisfaction with Pepco plunged this year, prompting the electric company to be named the “most hated” company in America. Pepco received a customer satisfaction score of 54 on a scale of 1-100 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index, with a higher score signifying satisfied customers. It is the lowest Pepco has scored in the nine years ranked and a 16-point drop from last year, the largest among all utilities.
Pepco’s score caused the Business Insider website to declare the electric company the “most hated” company in America.
The score places Pepco at the bottom of the 25-largest investor-owned utilities and 20 points below average. Since 2006, Pepco has scored consistently below average.
By comparison, Dominion Resources– the parent company for Dominion Virginia Power — received a 77 for 2011, which was a 2.7-percent increase over its previous score.
Each company’s score is based on overall satisfaction, performance compared with customers’ expectations and performance compared with customers’ ideals, said David VanAmburg, managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Performance tends to come down to rates and reliability, he said. But reliability is more important.
“We saw anecdotally a lot of the problems that Pepco was witnessing,” VanAmburg said. “That’s not too surprising that you would see a score like this.”
Between January and March, survey takers for the American Customer Satisfaction Index interviewed about 7,500 residential energy consumers around the country about their satisfaction with their providers. About 250 Pepco customers were surveyed.
Pepco has about 784,000 Pepco customers in the Washington area.
“We have heard our customers loud and clear,” Pepco spokesman Bob Hainey said. “We are committed to upgrading and modernizing our system through hard work and advanced technology.”
In September, Pepco began a five-year plan to improve reliability. The company is taking steps like updating technology and cutting trees that might fall on power lines.
Maryland lawmakers passed legislation to improve utility reliability in the last General Assembly session, and D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh has introduced a bill aimed at improving Pepco’s reliability, which the council will vote on after its coming recess.
