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.

Episode Transcript

Intro: A production of Pioneer Utility Resources. (00:05):
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StoryConnect, helping communicators discover ideas to shapetheir stories and connect with their customers.

Andy Johns: How can surveys set you up for success? (00:16):
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That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of TheStoryConnect Podcast.
My name is Andy Johns with Pioneer, and I'm joined on thisepisode 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. (00:29):
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Andy Johns: We are here recording live at the NWPPA NIC. (00:30):
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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. (00:44):
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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 (00:45):
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coming up later today. It's called "Survey Savvy (00:50):
Unlocking customer insights for success."

Cameron Daline: Yes. (00:55):
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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. (00:55):
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Cameron Daline: Well, we have a pretty robust research program at Clark Public Utilities. (01:01):
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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 likethat.
So I was able to step into this program and happy to take thereins on it.

(01:23):
And we've been doing some research in some form or another sinceabout the 60s.
I have some great old research, like folios with handwrittencharts and everything.

Andy Johns: Cool. (01:31):
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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 (01:31):
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doing this work, is that in the 60s, there was one where weasked 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 thebiggest threat to the community.
Second only to, you know, same things we'll hear these daysabout conservation, and there's not going to be enough room for

(01:58):
all these people moving here.
We hear the same thing now.
So we've been doing research like that, general sentimentresearch, for 50 years.
We do transactional research too, where we ask customers abouttheir 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 dothat too.

Andy Johns: So you typically score very well on that one. (02:18):
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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 (02:20):
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that study, that our customer base was large enough for J.D.
Power to include us. So we do a combination of pulling data fromthat, pulling data from our transactional survey and our
operational things to understand how we can take care ofcustomers better on a day to day basis.
And then we also spend, I say, two times a year, we do abi-annual sentiment survey to get a little bit of a benchmark on

(02:45):
what our customers are thinking, where their heads are at, whattheir 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 ofknowledge 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 thekind of traditional electric utility, things like reliability and

(03:08):
affordability. We don't have to survey to know those are toppriorities.

Andy Johns: Sure. (03:11):
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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. (03:11):
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And then we can also try to do some predictive analytics ofseeing the long term trends, the short term trends, and then
better understanding where our customers are going, where ourindustry 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. (03:29):
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Cameron Daline: That's exactly right. Yeah. (03:32):
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We got to make sure not only is it people moving into thecounty, we can serve them, but not those darn hippies.

Andy Johns: Those hippies. (03:38):
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Cameron Daline: Yeah. (03:39):
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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, (03:39):
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but we do not work with Clark on those.
So all the work that Cameron is talking about is done eitherin-house or with other folks.
But I do want to get into a little bit about how often and howmuch do you survey.
I know you guys have a pretty big, you know, base of customers.

(04:01):
How often, you know, are you worrying about survey fatigue?
Are you hitting specific segments so that somebody's not gettinga survey every time?
How do you balance between we love to survey people every dayversus 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. (04:15):
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We don't want to get people in survey fatigue, especially aroundelection times, for example.
We're very conscientious about that because, you know, coming upto November elections, for example, people get text messages,
people get emails, people get all these things.

Andy Johns: So many text messages and emails. (04:29):
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Cameron Daline: So many. And so we don't want to be involved with that. (04:31):
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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.

(04:51):
So that's a unique one where we don't see a lot of opt out onthat one, because customers are very clear in their understanding
of we're wanting to know how can we take care of you betterbased on the recent transaction you had with us.
Right?

Andy Johns: Right. (05:01):
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Cameron Daline: Pretty straightforward. That only takes a couple of minutes to do. (05:01):
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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 (05:05):
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unusual that somebody would have had an interaction with youguys 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 (05:18):
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know, they had an outage, and they called to find out moreinformation.
Or maybe they put in a service request because they saw a treethat needed to be trimmed.
And so we ask them about those.
So you're right, it's pretty rare that we would see the samecustomer come back over and over for that.
The sentiment, one that we do, we work with a survey company onthat one as well.
And they pull the representative sample from our customer basefor us.

(05:41):
They validate for us, and they quote it and make sure that we'regetting a representative sample of the county.
And again, it's pretty surprising for a lot of folks that don'tdo survey work.
That sample size doesn't have to be gigantic to get a reallygood, scientifically valid survey.
So for example, in Clark County we have about 500,000 people orso, rough number.
And when we do a survey of 400 customers twice a year, thatrepresents confidence level of 95% for that sample size,

(06:08):
which seems pretty low.
But again, if we do that, it's pretty rare that we would getsomeone over and over and over again.
And the survey company that we work with that fields that for usalso pays attention to that to make sure that, you know, they're
hitting new customers each time and not repeatedly calling thesame segment.

Andy Johns: And hitting that 95% confidence confidence interval, i mean, you feel pretty good about, you know, the overall sentiment (06:22):
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of what's coming across there.
I mean, you know, based on that 400 people, whether you're doinga 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. (06:37):
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Power study, and we get that data.
You know, there are multiple places we can validate against tomake 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 wherewe've gone this is not right.

Andy Johns: Right. (06:56):
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Cameron Daline: And so we feel very good about that. (06:56):
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It's proven scientifically.
And we have a lot of time on our side and a lot of other methodsfor 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 (07:05):
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use – I mean, how much are you using that wealth of historicaldata 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 timethan where we are today?

Cameron Daline: You have to be a little bit kind of conscientious of what the use case is for that. (07:21):
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So for example, I've recently been doing some presentation workwithin our utility to kind of, you know.
To back up a little bit, in my job, I do all the research, youknow, I work with our research companies.
I compile all of it. But what I've discovered is kind of thebiggest impact I can make in my work is taking that information
and making it digestible, and then customizing that data to giveit back to our different teams so that they can then see the

(07:46):
connection of the work that they do and how it directly impactsthe customers.
And so I can connect those things.

Andy Johns: That's super important. (07:51):
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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 (07:52):
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pretty big impact. One of the more recent ones I've been showingis our customers, we just finally had our first rate increase for
customers for the first time since 2011, so we haven't had arate change for 13 years.
And so we've been doing that bi-annual survey that I mentionedfor years and years and years.

(08:13):
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 showyou the impact that things like a rate change can have.
And in their case, you know, our team does so well for ourcustomers 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 godown when that happens.

(08:35):
We can correlate and validate that data, but we can see thatcustomer satisfaction stays high.
So by having that long term picture that I can show them and seethis big historical impact where most of them have not been there
for that long, we have a lot of people who have, but most peoplehaven'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 theinformation we have and share, and also show that powerful point

(08:55):
of connection that yes, this happens, this affects people'sperceptions.
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? (09:06):
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Like, no, that was 1999 turns out.

Cameron Daline: Yep, yep. (09:13):
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Andy Johns: So you touched on exactly where I was headed next. (09:14):
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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 shelfas it was, it doesn't do any good.
So what steps are you? You mentioned some of them there, butwhat what other kind of things are you doing to make sure that
you guys are set up to take action on the information that'sdelivered to you and those results?

Cameron Daline: That's the really tricky part, right? (09:35):
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And that's what I was touching on a little bit, I think is kindof 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 analysisparalysis, 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. (09:49):
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Cameron Daline: Tons of that, and that's real common. (09:50):
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And it's nothing wrong with that.
But I have found that it seems for me to be the most effectivewith 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 thisdata 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 NICthat have made a lot of that point about, it's about how people

(10:13):
feel, and it's about the connection with how you communicatethat.
So to me, the fine art is that when you can carefully curatethat 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 theyneed to do to take action on that, right?
So I'll have a few examples in the presentation I give later.

(10:34):
But even just the simplest things, that is very easy tounderstand for everybody about customers like it when you do
this. Here's three things that happened this year that wereimpactful 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 tobetter take care of our customers, right?

(10:57):
And so having just one or 2 or 3 things for each audience, forthem to be like, Oh, that's my natural takeaway.
I know that maybe when I'm talking to customers, I sawinformation that 50% of people said they took a financial hit.
I saw information from, you know, from our customer researchthat said they had a really poor outlook on the community.
I can instantly become a little more empathetic andunderstanding because I can have that scale of what they're going

(11:21):
through. And if you can have that, it's amazing the kind ofshift 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 abetter 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.

(11:41):
I'm fortunate in that since our CEO came from a background ofdoing 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 seniorleadership team, and then they can work that data as they feel
appropriate into their strategic priorities and into the goalsin the upcoming years, and know that they can come back to me as
a resource to find out.

(12:02):
And so sometimes it's those short term things like right now youcan think I can be a little bit nicer and more patient with that
customer because they're going through something that I don'tknow about, right.
But on a bigger scale, it might mean that three years ago, westarted 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 andus and our communications team to start building those pieces so

(12:24):
that when it becomes overwhelming that that's what our customerswant, we're not on the back foot.

Andy Johns: Got it. (12:28):
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Cameron Daline: There's probably a longer answer than you wanted. (12:29):
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Andy Johns: No no, no. It touched on some good things to bring up. (12:30):
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And one of the things that you talked about is you just neverknow.
I think it's important to do surveys because it does help youunderstand 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 differentgeneration, of a different background.
What steps do you all do to make sure that you are including allkinds of different voices.

(12:52):
I know that's something that's important to you all, whetherit's age or socioeconomic or cultural, ethnic, racial.
What kind of efforts do you all do to make sure the survey givesa pretty good picture, kind of across the entire membership
base or a customer base or even have you had done any thatreally dives into specific segments of your customer

(13:14):
base?

Cameron Daline: We do that with the transactional survey we do, that's kind of out the window. (13:14):
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We do ask those questions so that we can also then break it outand segment and cross tabulate to see if we see any shifts like
by generation and see if we see any shifts, maybe bysocioeconomic 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 sowe can see the same thing too.

(13:34):
So we can start seeing trends, right.
We can segment out. I don't go, and we don't go very deep intoyou 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 andunderstanding 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, oneof the trends that has surprised a lot of people is, you know,

(13:59):
the older generation, you know, the people of the boomer age orso 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. (14:10):
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Cameron Daline: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. (14:11):
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Like yeah DM me, slide in.
But then the younger generation now, they all like the phoneagain.

Andy Johns: Oh interesting. (14:17):
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Cameron Daline: Yeah. Especially post-Covid, we see those numbers. (14:18):
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The younger folks like that.
And that's a really like surprising piece of information that weget back, right.
So if someone says well do we need to invest more into ourdigital self-service and maybe divert some of that from the
telephones, we can look at that data and be like, our peoplestill like the telephone.
And maybe, surprisingly to some, the younger folks, they likethat again.

(14:40):
You know, and which makes sense if you then take the nextlogical step and think, well, during Covid, people were pretty
isolated. So I've heard that and read that in our verbatims weget 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, youknow, like, again, a small example of that of this group of our

(15:02):
customers is thinking a little different than this.
On a bigger scale in Clark County, we have kind of almost alwaysa 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 justa 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.

(15:22):
We can be conscientious, and we can make sure we're keeping inmind that are we being tone deaf to what this group of customers
said versus not? Or are we talking about something in a way thatsomeone 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 aroadblock from someone if you are not paying attention to their
preferences and their things, and not paying attention to theway that they're kind of looking at the world right now.

Andy Johns: Sure, everybody's got a different perspective. (15:47):
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This could, we could dive into the deep end here.
But let's talk about kind of the future of where you see thisgoing.
Are you guys using AI to help you kind of synthesize and analyzethose results coming in?
Is that something that you think will be something you use inthe 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. (16:09):
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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? (16:09):
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Cameron Daline: We don't. I think there's a big place for it, but we don't have. (16:13):
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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, youknow, 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. (16:28):
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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? (16:30):
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Learn how to turn, do those things.
And to me, until you can say that you've fully maximized andyou've fully gotten all the knowledge that you can possibly get
out of the more basic things, there's not a lot of sense ingetting that far into it, right?
I think it also maybe is dependent too on organizational size,right.

(16:51):
Many other utilities maybe that are, you know, big privatelyowned utilities with millions of customers and do hundreds of
thousands of research pieces every single month, that would bean 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 agood place for it for us is in speech analytics.

(17:14):
So for example, when we do these surveys, we also have someopen-ended questions where we get these quotes back from
customers. And I spend a ton of time reading through all thoseverbatims, finding the commonality.
But there's some pretty neat tools out there to help feed thatinformation into you and see what are the common threads.
And another place for that same kind of technology with AI cancome through in our phone systems.

(17:36):
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 cankind 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 toolto kind of get that leading edge in that hint of what's going to

(18:01):
come up for our customers. What can we learn from whateverybody's chattering about a little bit?
And not to make critical decisions or anything, but just to bethat extra piece and that extra layer of context.

Andy Johns: Yeah. Even what words are folks using. (18:10):
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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 orwatching, they don't have the survey history going back to the
60s. Maybe they've never done, or they've taken a break andhaven't done it.
They don't have a lot of experience or, you know, historicalbackground with surveys.

(18:32):
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, whatadvice would you have for folks?

Cameron Daline: I think keep it simple at first, right? (18:39):
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Identify –

Andy Johns: The Honda and Ferrari thing again. (18:42):
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Cameron Daline: That's exactly it. Yep. (18:43):
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Yeah. Don't go to the Ferrari showroom until you actually knowhow to unlock the door of your Honda.

Andy Johns: Fair enough. (18:49):
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Cameron Daline: And even if you keep it simple, identify. (18:49):
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I think the key things are understanding, what do you want tomeasure, right?
Understand what your key performance indicators are.
So when I say know what you want to measure, think about are yousurveying because you want to change something?
Or are you serving because you want to better understand yourcustomers?
So lay that out first.
What are your motives? And think about this.
I always tell people, and I heard this somewhere else, but youcan't change what you don't measure.

(19:11):
So if there's something that you think you want to change, ormaybe 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 tomeasure, how can you be operationally better?
Transactional research versus sentiment research andunderstanding, maybe understanding customer satisfaction,

(19:33):
community outlook, communications preferences.
Those are different things.
So understanding what kind of survey you want to set up and whatyou 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. (19:45):
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Cameron Daline: That's exactly right. Be prepared for the results. (19:49):
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You may be surprised.
You probably will be surprised, but make sure that you actuallyhave the tools and mechanisms in place to act on those insights.
That way you don't have the analysis paralysis, or you don'thave 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. (20:04):
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I have one more thing related to what you just said.
When I've talked to our survey partners, they said that, youknow, generally, you know, utilities know their audiences pretty
well. They may not know their base as well as they think theydo.
That it's kind of a 80% is kind of what they they thought wouldbe, but then there's 20% of surprises.

Cameron Daline: Yeah. (20:26):
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Andy Johns: Would you say that kind of holds up with some of the surveys you all have done? (20:26):
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Cameron Daline: I think so too, yeah. (20:29):
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Because you'll see things that are certainly, again, notsurprising, 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? (20:38):
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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." (20:40):
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Andy Johns: All right. (20:44):
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Cameron Daline: Yeah. It's kind of like that. Nine out of ten dentists recommend this toothpaste. (20:44):
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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 justthe 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 theinsight can come in in surprising ways.

Andy Johns: Perfect. Well, Cameron, thanks so much for joining me on this episode. (21:07):
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Cameron Daline: Yeah, thanks for having me. (21:11):
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Andy Johns: He is Cameron Daline. (21:12):
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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 ofour 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 communications cooperative that is built to share your story. (21:27):
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