Off Peak

Deck: 
Payoffs don't stack up to the work involved in switching suppliers, say businesses.
Fortnightly Magazine - September 15 2000
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Off Peak

September 15, 2000

The Big Letdown

Payoffs don't stack up to the work involved in switching suppliers, say businesses.

Switching electric suppliers appears to make for disappointed business customers.

According to a national study of U.S. businesses conducted by RKS Research & Consulting in late spring, those that switched electric suppliers in hopes of lowering their bills express the lowest level of satisfaction in all areas of supplier performance other than price. Companies that stayed with their providers, by contrast, not only are more satisfied, but also give their supplier high marks in all major areas of performance, from cost savings and customer service to billing and usage information.

These findings can be explained in large part by customer expectations, according to Carmine Grastataro, senior vice president at RKS.

"Expectations are essentially the highest among the groups that have recently been exposed to choice for the very first time or are anticipating choice in a very short time period, like maybe the state of Ohio," he says. "The areas that we're describing in the study with disappointment in performance, those are the areas that have had choice for some time-Pennsylvania, California, New Hampshire, places like that. They have been through the process of selecting a provider more than once in a lot of cases."

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