Fostering Success Through Surveys, With Cameron Daline

Clark Public Utilities has been surveying its customers since the 1960s. How have the valuable insights gleaned from surveys helped the utility successfully serve its community? Customer Experience Manager Cameron Daline tells us on this podcast episode.

Creators & Guests

Host

Andy Johns

Vice President of Marketing

What is The StoryConnect Podcast?

StoryConnect features interviews with marketers, communicators, CEOs and other leaders at cooperative and independent broadband companies, electric cooperatives and municipal power providers. The goal of the podcast is to help listeners discover ideas to shape their stories and connect with their customers. It is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources.

Intro:
A production of Pioneer Utility Resources.

StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shape
their stories and connect with their customers.

Andy Johns:
How can surveys set you up for success?

That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of The
StoryConnect Podcast.

My name is Andy Johns with Pioneer, and I'm joined on this
episode by Cameron Daline, who is the customer experience manager

at Clark Public Utilities.

Cameron, thank you for joining me.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Andy Johns:
We are here recording live at the NWPPA NIC.

As we always say, it's not background noise; it's ambiance.

Because we are right here at the very center, the nerve center,
of public power communications in the Northwest this week.

It's been a great week already.

Cameron Daline:
Yes it has.

Andy Johns:
So your session that you've got coming up today, I've not gotten
to see it yet, obviously, but as we're recording this, it's

coming up later today. It's called "Survey Savvy: Unlocking
customer insights for success."

Cameron Daline:
Yes.

Andy Johns:
Tell me a little bit about the surveys and market research,
customer research, that you guys do at Clark Public Utilities.

Cameron Daline:
Well, we have a pretty robust research program at Clark Public
Utilities.

I came into it about five years ago.

The previous person that did it was promoted to be the CEO.

So it opened up a role that I was really excited about.

I came from a background doing some data work and things like
that.

So I was able to step into this program and happy to take the
reins on it.

And we've been doing some research in some form or another since
about the 60s.

I have some great old research, like folios with handwritten
charts and everything.

Andy Johns:
Cool.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah. And my favorite stat from that, that I like to pull out to
give people some connection and scale of like how long we've been

doing this work, is that in the 60s, there was one where we
asked our customers, what's the biggest concern in the community?

What are you most concerned to impact Clark County?

And one of them was "hippie culture" was number one as the
biggest threat to the community.

Second only to, you know, same things we'll hear these days
about conservation, and there's not going to be enough room for

all these people moving here.

We hear the same thing now.

So we've been doing research like that, general sentiment
research, for 50 years.

We do transactional research too, where we ask customers about
their recent service experience.

We do that quarterly.

We also are large enough to be included in the J.D.

Power Utility, a residential electric utility survey, so we do
that too.

Andy Johns:
So you typically score very well on that one.

Cameron Daline:
We've been very fortunate. Our customers have given us that award
16 years in a row, which is every single year that we've been in

that study, that our customer base was large enough for J.D.

Power to include us. So we do a combination of pulling data from
that, pulling data from our transactional survey and our

operational things to understand how we can take care of
customers better on a day to day basis.

And then we also spend, I say, two times a year, we do a
bi-annual sentiment survey to get a little bit of a benchmark on

what our customers are thinking, where their heads are at, what
their priorities are for the services that we provide and how

they think we're doing in those areas.

And that all combined gives us a really good kind of fountain of
knowledge to figure out what are we doing well, and we can keep

doing for our customers. And what do they like?

What do they want to see us improve on a little bit?

And where do they want us to focus our efforts outside of the
kind of traditional electric utility, things like reliability and

affordability. We don't have to survey to know those are top
priorities.

Andy Johns:
Sure.

Cameron Daline:
So we can fine tune that a little bit with how we do those things
with this survey research that we do.

And then we can also try to do some predictive analytics of
seeing the long term trends, the short term trends, and then

better understanding where our customers are going, where our
industry is going, so that we can anticipate and be less reactive

and be more proactive with how we take care of our customers.

Andy Johns:
More proactive in how you how you manage that hippie culture.

Cameron Daline:
That's exactly right. Yeah.

We got to make sure not only is it people moving into the
county, we can serve them, but not those darn hippies.

Andy Johns:
Those hippies.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah.

Andy Johns:
A lot to unpack there. I do want to say, just full disclosure,
Pioneer does do survey work with our partners at Pulse Research,

but we do not work with Clark on those.

So all the work that Cameron is talking about is done either
in-house or with other folks.

But I do want to get into a little bit about how often and how
much do you survey.

I know you guys have a pretty big, you know, base of customers.

How often, you know, are you worrying about survey fatigue?

Are you hitting specific segments so that somebody's not getting
a survey every time?

How do you balance between we love to survey people every day
versus what's practical and what might eventually lead to lower

participation rates if you over survey?

Cameron Daline:
Right. And that's definitely a fine art.

We don't want to get people in survey fatigue, especially around
election times, for example.

We're very conscientious about that because, you know, coming up
to November elections, for example, people get text messages,

people get emails, people get all these things.

Andy Johns:
So many text messages and emails.

Cameron Daline:
So many. And so we don't want to be involved with that.

We want it to be valid for our customers.

So we keep them short. We keep them brief.

And for our transactional one, we do that four times a year.

We have about 235,000 electric customers.

And we do that one, we do 200 per quarter.

And that's specifically customers who've had contact with us,
some sort of service contact within the last two weeks.

So that's a unique one where we don't see a lot of opt out on
that one, because customers are very clear in their understanding

of we're wanting to know how can we take care of you better
based on the recent transaction you had with us.

Right?

Andy Johns:
Right.

Cameron Daline:
Pretty straightforward. That only takes a couple of minutes to
do.

Our sentiment, one that we do –

Andy Johns:
And that list kind of kind of takes care of itself because odds
are good that within that two week period, it's going to be very

unusual that somebody would have had an interaction with you
guys within the last two weeks, enough times to be to show up in

other surveys. That makes sense.

Cameron Daline:
Yep, that's exactly right. So we don't have a lot of customers
that will get that repeatedly, because most of the time it's, you

know, they had an outage, and they called to find out more
information.

Or maybe they put in a service request because they saw a tree
that needed to be trimmed.

And so we ask them about those.

So you're right, it's pretty rare that we would see the same
customer come back over and over for that.

The sentiment, one that we do, we work with a survey company on
that one as well.

And they pull the representative sample from our customer base
for us.

They validate for us, and they quote it and make sure that we're
getting a representative sample of the county.

And again, it's pretty surprising for a lot of folks that don't
do survey work.

That sample size doesn't have to be gigantic to get a really
good, scientifically valid survey.

So for example, in Clark County we have about 500,000 people or
so, rough number.

And when we do a survey of 400 customers twice a year, that
represents confidence level of 95% for that sample size,

which seems pretty low.

But again, if we do that, it's pretty rare that we would get
someone over and over and over again.

And the survey company that we work with that fields that for us
also pays attention to that to make sure that, you know, they're

hitting new customers each time and not repeatedly calling the
same segment.

Andy Johns:
And hitting that 95% confidence confidence interval, i mean, you
feel pretty good about, you know, the overall sentiment

of what's coming across there.

I mean, you know, based on that 400 people, whether you're doing
a good job or not and what are some areas you can improve.

Cameron Daline:
We do. And we're also fortunate enough in that since we're big
enough to be included in the J.D.

Power study, and we get that data.

You know, there are multiple places we can validate against to
make sure that everything's lining up and to make sure that it is

actually representative of what our customers think.

So, yeah, we haven't had any crazy outliers or any times where
we've gone this is not right.

Andy Johns:
Right.

Cameron Daline:
And so we feel very good about that.

It's proven scientifically.

And we have a lot of time on our side and a lot of other methods
for us to validate the accuracy of what we're getting back.

Andy Johns:
No, because, and I hadn't planned to ask this one, but because of
your unique kind of history going back so far, do you guys ever

use – I mean, how much are you using that wealth of historical
data do you have to chart things?

Are you going back that far?

Or is it really, you know, draw a line that's a different time
than where we are today?

Cameron Daline:
You have to be a little bit kind of conscientious of what the use
case is for that.

So for example, I've recently been doing some presentation work
within our utility to kind of, you know.

To back up a little bit, in my job, I do all the research, you
know, I work with our research companies.

I compile all of it. But what I've discovered is kind of the
biggest impact I can make in my work is taking that information

and making it digestible, and then customizing that data to give
it back to our different teams so that they can then see the

connection of the work that they do and how it directly impacts
the customers.

And so I can connect those things.

Andy Johns:
That's super important.

Cameron Daline:
Right? And that's neat. And so being able to also convey to them
that we've been doing these surveys for a long time can have a

pretty big impact. One of the more recent ones I've been showing
is our customers, we just finally had our first rate increase for

customers for the first time since 2011, so we haven't had a
rate change for 13 years.

And so we've been doing that bi-annual survey that I mentioned
for years and years and years.

And so I put together a chart for them that shows 25 years.

Right. All the way back to, you know, 1999, 2000.

So I can say, here's a quarter century's worth of data to show
you the impact that things like a rate change can have.

And in their case, you know, our team does so well for our
customers that I can show them that over the last 25 years, we've

had a couple rate increases.

And you can see that people's perceptions of rate fairness go
down when that happens.

We can correlate and validate that data, but we can see that
customer satisfaction stays high.

So by having that long term picture that I can show them and see
this big historical impact where most of them have not been there

for that long, we have a lot of people who have, but most people
haven't that I'm presenting this to haven't been there for 25

years. So I can show them that they can have confidence in the
information we have and share, and also show that powerful point

of connection that yes, this happens, this affects people's
perceptions.

But you guys are so good that customers still like you.

They trust you. That's pretty impactful.

I couldn't do that with only two years of data.

Andy Johns:
Thanks for bringing up the 1999 with 25 years ago, when you said
25 years ago, I was like, okay, the mid 80s?

Like, no, that was 1999 turns out.

Cameron Daline:
Yep, yep.

Andy Johns:
So you touched on exactly where I was headed next.

You can do a survey.

You can spend a ton of money on a survey, a ton of effort.

And then if the results just sit on a shelf, or a virtual shelf
as it was, it doesn't do any good.

So what steps are you? You mentioned some of them there, but
what what other kind of things are you doing to make sure that

you guys are set up to take action on the information that's
delivered to you and those results?

Cameron Daline:
That's the really tricky part, right?

And that's what I was touching on a little bit, I think is kind
of the fine art of doing this work is yeah, what good is the data

if you don't do anything with it?

And then sometimes there's a little bit of like analysis
paralysis, where you get it all and you're like, I don't know

what we're supposed to do with this.

Andy Johns:
There's so much, yeah.

Cameron Daline:
Tons of that, and that's real common.

And it's nothing wrong with that.

But I have found that it seems for me to be the most effective
with our staff, to be able to not try to take everything and

throw everything at them all at once.

You kind of figure out what's the main important story in this
data and give them a few chunks at a time.

So kind of curating the story that you're telling.

You know, we've seen some great presentations here at the NIC
that have made a lot of that point about, it's about how people

feel, and it's about the connection with how you communicate
that.

So to me, the fine art is that when you can carefully curate
that information, you get and tell the story with it and back it

up. So then it's kind of quantitative and qualitative together.

It almost becomes natural for people that lead into what they
need to do to take action on that, right?

So I'll have a few examples in the presentation I give later.

But even just the simplest things, that is very easy to
understand for everybody about customers like it when you do

this. Here's three things that happened this year that were
impactful for our customers.

Covid, right a couple of years ago.

And so I'll show them this is a big thing, right?

It affects our customers.

It affects us. Here's what it looks like in the data.

And here's some really easy things that we can do to adjust to
better take care of our customers, right?

And so having just one or 2 or 3 things for each audience, for
them to be like, Oh, that's my natural takeaway.

I know that maybe when I'm talking to customers, I saw
information that 50% of people said they took a financial hit.

I saw information from, you know, from our customer research
that said they had a really poor outlook on the community.

I can instantly become a little more empathetic and
understanding because I can have that scale of what they're going

through. And if you can have that, it's amazing the kind of
shift that people can make and how they help customers, right?

Because everyone wants to be empathetic.

Everyone wants to help.

But it's hard to do that in a genuine way if you don't have a
better picture and understanding of what people are dealing with

outside of their transaction with you as a utility.

So those are small ones on a bigger scale.

I'm fortunate in that since our CEO came from a background of
doing customer research, she understands the value better than

anyone at our organization of that information.

So I'm able to share that information with kind of our senior
leadership team, and then they can work that data as they feel

appropriate into their strategic priorities and into the goals
in the upcoming years, and know that they can come back to me as

a resource to find out.

And so sometimes it's those short term things like right now you
can think I can be a little bit nicer and more patient with that

customer because they're going through something that I don't
know about, right.

But on a bigger scale, it might mean that three years ago, we
started to see this trend and customers wanting more digital

self-service tools, for example.

So we know that that's some foundation for maybe our IS team and
us and our communications team to start building those pieces so

that when it becomes overwhelming that that's what our customers
want, we're not on the back foot.

Andy Johns:
Got it.

Cameron Daline:
There's probably a longer answer than you wanted.

Andy Johns:
No no, no. It touched on some good things to bring up.

And one of the things that you talked about is you just never
know.

I think it's important to do surveys because it does help you
understand that customer so that your folks aren't understanding.

Well, this is what it would mean to me.

It may mean something very different to somebody of a different
generation, of a different background.

What steps do you all do to make sure that you are including all
kinds of different voices.

I know that's something that's important to you all, whether
it's age or socioeconomic or cultural, ethnic, racial.

What kind of efforts do you all do to make sure the survey gives
a pretty good picture, kind of across the entire membership

base or a customer base or even have you had done any that
really dives into specific segments of your customer

base?

Cameron Daline:
We do that with the transactional survey we do, that's kind of
out the window.

We do ask those questions so that we can also then break it out
and segment and cross tabulate to see if we see any shifts like

by generation and see if we see any shifts, maybe by
socioeconomic background, any of those things.

When we do our sentiment survey that we field, and then the J.D.

Power study that they field, of course, those are quoted out so
we can see the same thing too.

So we can start seeing trends, right.

We can segment out. I don't go, and we don't go very deep into
you know, we don't correlate usage into that.

We're not on an advanced metering infrastructure.

So we can't do that. But even taking the simple things and
understanding that like maybe preferences in how we get in touch

with our customers might be different by generation.

And then you learn surprising things, right?

So even if we don't go too far into like deep demographics, one
of the trends that has surprised a lot of people is, you know,

the older generation, you know, the people of the boomer age or
so generally they like telephone as a primary communication

method. Then you have, you know, the Gen X and the millennials,
and they prefer text message a little bit.

Andy Johns:
Yeah. Text me bro.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Like yeah DM me, slide in.

But then the younger generation now, they all like the phone
again.

Andy Johns:
Oh interesting.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah. Especially post-Covid, we see those numbers.

The younger folks like that.

And that's a really like surprising piece of information that we
get back, right.

So if someone says well do we need to invest more into our
digital self-service and maybe divert some of that from the

telephones, we can look at that data and be like, our people
still like the telephone.

And maybe, surprisingly to some, the younger folks, they like
that again.

You know, and which makes sense if you then take the next
logical step and think, well, during Covid, people were pretty

isolated. So I've heard that and read that in our verbatims we
get back where customers who are younger say, I really like I can

call you guys. That's pretty rare now.

And like, I love to just be able to call and talk to somebody.

So that's an actionable thing that comes there that we see, you
know, like, again, a small example of that of this group of our

customers is thinking a little different than this.

On a bigger scale in Clark County, we have kind of almost always
a 49-51% kind of split on either side of the political spectrum.

So we kind of look at that a little bit, but more so that's just
a good example for us to think about.

We're serving both of these customer bases.

We're serving every one of these generations.

We're serving all of those. So we can look.

We can be conscientious, and we can make sure we're keeping in
mind that are we being tone deaf to what this group of customers

said versus not? Or are we talking about something in a way that
someone might feel is politicized when it's not?

And can we adjust how we talk about it?

Topics the same, message is the same, but you might get a
roadblock from someone if you are not paying attention to their

preferences and their things, and not paying attention to the
way that they're kind of looking at the world right now.

Andy Johns:
Sure, everybody's got a different perspective.

This could, we could dive into the deep end here.

But let's talk about kind of the future of where you see this
going.

Are you guys using AI to help you kind of synthesize and analyze
those results coming in?

Is that something that you think will be something you use in
the future?

Does AI play into this?

Because it seems like one of the themes of this conference at
the NIC, AI is everywhere.

Cameron Daline:
It is.

Andy Johns:
So are you are you guys using any of that yet, or is that
something you see coming down the road?

Cameron Daline:
We don't. I think there's a big place for it, but we don't have.

I don't see the place for it for us right now.

And the analogy that I like to use a lot of times where, you
know, you see these really cool AI tools and how you can compile

data and do predictive analytics, and you can do all this stuff,
but don't buy a Ferrari until you know how to drive a Honda.

Andy Johns:
Fair enough. I like that.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah. And so for me, it's kind of like, you know, the old race
car adage of like, go slow to go fast, right?

Learn how to turn, do those things.

And to me, until you can say that you've fully maximized and
you've fully gotten all the knowledge that you can possibly get

out of the more basic things, there's not a lot of sense in
getting that far into it, right?

I think it also maybe is dependent too on organizational size,
right.

Many other utilities maybe that are, you know, big privately
owned utilities with millions of customers and do hundreds of

thousands of research pieces every single month, that would be
an incredible tool for them.

Just for the sheer data analytics and compiling all that.

It's just not to that scale for us.

So I think there's a place for it in a lot of ways.

One of the pieces I'm intrigued by that I think there may be a
good place for it for us is in speech analytics.

So for example, when we do these surveys, we also have some
open-ended questions where we get these quotes back from

customers. And I spend a ton of time reading through all those
verbatims, finding the commonality.

But there's some pretty neat tools out there to help feed that
information into you and see what are the common threads.

And another place for that same kind of technology with AI can
come through in our phone systems.

In any phone systems, you know, probably like all utilities,
phone calls that come into the customer service center are

recorded. Some of these advanced AI speech analytics tools can
kind of take all that hours and hours of recordings, and same

thing see what are the trends, what common words are coming up?

And that can really bubble some things up to the surface.

What's on customers minds?

What are they talking about? Sometimes that can be a great tool
to kind of get that leading edge in that hint of what's going to

come up for our customers. What can we learn from what
everybody's chattering about a little bit?

And not to make critical decisions or anything, but just to be
that extra piece and that extra layer of context.

Andy Johns:
Yeah. Even what words are folks using.

I mean, all of that. That's totally, very insightful.

Last question for you.

Let's say that there's a utility out there who's listening or
watching, they don't have the survey history going back to the

60s. Maybe they've never done, or they've taken a break and
haven't done it.

They don't have a lot of experience or, you know, historical
background with surveys.

What advice would you have for them in getting started?

Or if it's folks that do a little bit, but want to do more, what
advice would you have for folks?

Cameron Daline:
I think keep it simple at first, right?

Identify –

Andy Johns:
The Honda and Ferrari thing again.

Cameron Daline:
That's exactly it. Yep.

Yeah. Don't go to the Ferrari showroom until you actually know
how to unlock the door of your Honda.

Andy Johns:
Fair enough.

Cameron Daline:
And even if you keep it simple, identify.

I think the key things are understanding, what do you want to
measure, right?

Understand what your key performance indicators are.

So when I say know what you want to measure, think about are you
surveying because you want to change something?

Or are you serving because you want to better understand your
customers?

So lay that out first.

What are your motives? And think about this.

I always tell people, and I heard this somewhere else, but you
can't change what you don't measure.

So if there's something that you think you want to change, or
maybe you find out that you don't need to change, you got to

start by measuring it. You're setting your foundation.

So identify what your key performance indicators are.

What do you want to know, right.

And also understand are you setting up something just to
measure, how can you be operationally better?

Transactional research versus sentiment research and
understanding, maybe understanding customer satisfaction,

community outlook, communications preferences.

Those are different things.

So understanding what kind of survey you want to set up and what
you want to measure, I think are probably the things I would say

that are the base level foundation you have to start with.

Andy Johns:
And then it sounds like, right after that the next priority would
be have a plan to act on it.

Cameron Daline:
That's exactly right. Be prepared for the results.

You may be surprised.

You probably will be surprised, but make sure that you actually
have the tools and mechanisms in place to act on those insights.

That way you don't have the analysis paralysis, or you don't
have those very valuable insights just on a pretty little shelf

with nothing to happen out of it.

Andy Johns:
Right. I know I said that was the last question.

I have one more thing related to what you just said.

When I've talked to our survey partners, they said that, you
know, generally, you know, utilities know their audiences pretty

well. They may not know their base as well as they think they
do.

That it's kind of a 80% is kind of what they they thought would
be, but then there's 20% of surprises.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah.

Andy Johns:
Would you say that kind of holds up with some of the surveys you
all have done?

Cameron Daline:
I think so too, yeah.

Because you'll see things that are certainly, again, not
surprising, like it comes back that 99% of customers say that

they think us having reliable power is important.

We know that. That's not surprising.

Andy Johns:
Who's the other 1% there?

Cameron Daline:
Most of the time they're like, those are the people who are like,
"oh, I don't know." So part of it's "I don't know."

Andy Johns:
All right.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah. It's kind of like that. Nine out of ten dentists recommend
this toothpaste.

Like who's that ten? Kind of like that.

But as an example, right.

But then you get the things that might surprise you out of it.

And I think that 80-20 is pretty fair because then you get just
the little nuggets, like I was talking about, like younger people

really like the phone, stuff like that.

So that seems like a pretty fair one.

And I think I would just say embrace that 20%.

You don't know, because that's where the real value and the
insight can come in in surprising ways.

Andy Johns:
Perfect. Well, Cameron, thanks so much for joining me on this
episode.

Cameron Daline:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Andy Johns:
He is Cameron Daline.

He is the customer experience manager at Clark Public Utilities.

I'm your host Andy Johns with Pioneer.

Thanks to the folks at the NWPPA for letting us record some of
our podcast here.

Thank you again, Cameron, for being on.

And thank you guys for listening.

Until we talk again, keep telling your story.

Outro:
StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources, a
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