Title
Transactional Survey Report: January - June 2025
Body
DPU's Transactional Survey report covers the first half of calendar 2025. Conducted by Great Blue Research, the survey investigates: 1) reasons for contacting DPU; 2) methods of interaction with DPU; 3) the number of times customers must contact DPU to resolve their issue; 4) how DPU's staff is rated by customers; and 5) demographic profiles of those responding to the survey. It has a 95% confidence level and with 167 people responding, it has a margin of error of +/- 7.55%.
As is typical with this survey, the vast majority of respondents were residential customers. Only four were commercial customers, making commercial responses meaningless as a stand alone category. More than 3/4 of 167 respondents were in households of 1-3 people, 64% live on the hill, and at least 82% own their homes. More than half the customers who responded, 56%, have been DPU customers for at least 20 years.
This report compares against the previous two 6-month periods of 2024 as well as the quarter covering October through December of 2023. More than 77% of the respondents rated interactions with Customer Care staff and the remaining interactions were split between interactions in the field and interactions with other DPU employees. Over the last four survey report periods, the Customer Care interactions over the phone have steadily declined while in-person interactions at the Customer Care Center have increased. Customers are invited to complete this survey through a number of methods, including links provided by field crews on business cards, invitation links in email signatures, and signs at the Customer Care Center (CCC). However, the greatest number of responses come from text messages sent to individuals who have reached out to the CCC by phone. Customers who meet with staff outside of the CCC typically call in to the phones answered by Customer Care staff to initiate those arrangements, so this method still typically captures interactions with other DPU staff.
Payment arrangements as a reason to reach out to DPU doubled the result from the first half of 2024, increasing from 12.3% to 25.1%, or about 42 respondents. While the contact resolution results, or the number of times customers must make contact before their issues are resolved, may appear to be slipping, they are still well within the margin of error. The results for DPU representative characteristics were lower than in 2024. The Customer Care staff, however, was down to only two representatives for about half of the survey period so their per-person work load was much heavier than usual. The Administration and Finance Division has been actively recruiting to fill the Customer Care Center vacancies. GreatBlue's analysis showed that the overall decline in ratings for DPU representatives from the second half of 2024 to the first half of 2025 was primarily driven by customers who required multiple contacts to resolve their issue. Customers whose issues were resolved on first contact continued to provide consistently high satisfaction ratings, showing little to no decline over the same time period.
Attachments
A - Los Alamos Transactional Report CY2025 H1