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Intro:
A production of Pioneer Utility Resources.

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

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

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

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

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at Clark Public Utilities.

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Cameron, thank you for joining me.

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Cameron Daline:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

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

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

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

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It's been a great week already.

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Cameron Daline:
Yes it has.

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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

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

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Cameron Daline:
Yes.

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

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

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I came into it about five years ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Andy Johns:
Cool.

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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

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

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What are you most concerned to impact Clark County?

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

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

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all these people moving here.

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We hear the same thing now.

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

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

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We do that quarterly.

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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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

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

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they think we're doing in those areas.

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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

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doing for our customers. And what do they like?

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

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

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

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Andy Johns:
Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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Cameron Daline:
That's exactly right. Yeah.

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

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Andy Johns:
Those hippies.

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Cameron Daline:
Yeah.

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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,

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but we do not work with Clark on those.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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participation rates if you over survey?

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

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

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

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people get emails, people get all these things.

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Andy Johns:
So many text messages and emails.

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

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We want it to be valid for our customers.

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So we keep them short. We keep them brief.

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

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We have about 235,000 electric customers.

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

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

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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

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

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Right?

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Andy Johns:
Right.

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

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Our sentiment, one that we do –

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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

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

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other surveys. That makes sense.

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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

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

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

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And so we ask them about those.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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which seems pretty low.

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

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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

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

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

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of what's coming across there.

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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.

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

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Power study, and we get that data.

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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

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actually representative of what our customers think.

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

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Andy Johns:
Right.

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

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It's proven scientifically.

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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.

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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

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

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Are you going back that far?

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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And so I can connect those things.

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Andy Johns:
That's super important.

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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

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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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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

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had a couple rate increases.

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

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

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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

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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

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

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

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

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They trust you. That's pretty impactful.

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

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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?

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Like, no, that was 1999 turns out.

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Cameron Daline:
Yep, yep.

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

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You can do a survey.

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

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

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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

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

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

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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

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if you don't do anything with it?

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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

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what we're supposed to do with this.

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Andy Johns:
There's so much, yeah.

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

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And it's nothing wrong with that.

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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

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throw everything at them all at once.

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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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Covid, right a couple of years ago.

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

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It affects our customers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Because everyone wants to be empathetic.

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Everyone wants to help.

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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

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outside of their transaction with you as a utility.

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So those are small ones on a bigger scale.

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

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anyone at our organization of that information.

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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

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

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a resource to find out.

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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

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

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

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self-service tools, for example.

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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

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

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Andy Johns:
Got it.

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

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

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

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

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Well, this is what it would mean to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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base?

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

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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

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

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

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

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So we can start seeing trends, right.

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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.

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We're not on an advanced metering infrastructure.

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

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with our customers might be different by generation.

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And then you learn surprising things, right?

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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,

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

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

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Andy Johns:
Yeah. Text me bro.

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Cameron Daline:
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

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Like yeah DM me, slide in.

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

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Andy Johns:
Oh interesting.

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

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The younger folks like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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call you guys. That's pretty rare now.

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

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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

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customers is thinking a little different than this.

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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.

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

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We're serving both of these customer bases.

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We're serving every one of these generations.

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

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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

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

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And can we adjust how we talk about it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Does AI play into this?

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

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Cameron Daline:
It is.

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

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

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

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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

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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.

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Andy Johns:
Fair enough. I like that.

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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?

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Learn how to turn, do those things.

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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

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

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

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

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

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Just for the sheer data analytics and compiling all that.

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It's just not to that scale for us.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What's on customers minds?

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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

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

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

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

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

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Last question for you.

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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

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

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

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What advice would you have for them in getting started?

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

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

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Identify –

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Andy Johns:
The Honda and Ferrari thing again.

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Cameron Daline:
That's exactly it. Yep.

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

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Andy Johns:
Fair enough.

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

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

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Understand what your key performance indicators are.

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

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

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So lay that out first.

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What are your motives? And think about this.

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

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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

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

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So identify what your key performance indicators are.

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What do you want to know, right.

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

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

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community outlook, communications preferences.

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Those are different things.

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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

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

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

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

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You may be surprised.

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

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

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with nothing to happen out of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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Cameron Daline:
Yeah.

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

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Cameron Daline:
I think so too, yeah.

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

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they think us having reliable power is important.

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We know that. That's not surprising.

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

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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."

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Andy Johns:
All right.

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

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

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But as an example, right.

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

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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

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really like the phone, stuff like that.

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So that seems like a pretty fair one.

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

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

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

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Cameron Daline:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

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Andy Johns:
He is Cameron Daline.

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He is the customer experience manager at Clark Public Utilities.

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I'm your host Andy Johns with Pioneer.

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00:21:18,120 --> 00:21:22,050
Thanks to the folks at the NWPPA for letting us record some of
our podcast here.

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Thank you again, Cameron, for being on.

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And thank you guys for listening.

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Until we talk again, keep telling your story.

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Outro:
StoryConnect is produced by Pioneer Utility Resources, a
communications cooperative that is built to share your story.