Customer Focus: Price or Service?

Fortnightly Magazine - June 1 1995
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Donald Pardus

Chairman & CEO

Eastern Utilities Associates

Eastern Utilities is committed to creating a company and a culture that goes beyond just delivering electricity. Our primary goal is to compete not just on price but on the value of the total service provided. Customers are the driving force in any competitive marketplace, and our commitment to our present and future customers is to deliver services that the customer values and needs.

To emphasize our commitment to our customers, we reorganized our distribution business (em three retail companies in two states (em into a single unit under a consolidated management team. The cost savings realized from this consolidation, and many other cost-control measures undertaken over the past five years, underscore our objective of providing a competitively priced product.

Our newly established marketing department's goal is to provide complete energy services to our commercial and industrial customers. This department will also market emerging electrotechnologies to improve the efficiency and competitive position of our customers.

As we develop a stronger relationship with these customers, our customer value programs and products will be driven by what these customers perceive they value and need from energy services. Our value-added products will not be developed by preconceived perceptions of what we think our customers want; they will be designed by our customers for their particular use. To venture a guess that they will want credit cards or frequent buyer plans is a perfect example of a preconceived perception.

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