OPPD earns top tier customer satisfaction scores

Omaha Public Power District is adapting and evolving to meet changing customer expectations, and customers are taking notice. At this week’s committee meetings for the OPPD Board of Directors, utility leaders shared the results of annual residential and business syndicated customer surveys, which gave the utility high marks in customer satisfaction and engagement.

Matt Hardebeck, director of Customer Experience and Operations, presented the annual monitoring report for Strategic Directive (SD) 5: Customer Satisfaction.

Hardebeck said OPPD has met the directive’s goal of performance of being in the top quartile for satisfaction across all customer classes when compared with similarly sized utilities in the region. JD Power and their customer satisfaction studies are used to assess satisfaction among OPPD’s residential customers on a quarterly basis, or four times a year.

“We are proud of this performance, given an industrywide dip in customer satisfaction due to macro-economic forces and the pressures customers are feeling in their pocketbooks across the nation,” said Tim McAreavey, vice president of Customer Service for OPPD.

The utility has taken a number of proactive measures to give customers more control over their bills and more flexibility in how they pay their bills. These measures also include increasing awareness of financial assistance available to customers who are struggling financially.

“We saw really solid performance in how we care for our customers, across all areas of the company,” Hardebeck said. “For instance, customers gave OPPD high marks for power quality and reliability, which accounts for 25% of the survey’s overall score.”

OPPD earned especially high marks for satisfaction among business customers in a Cogent syndicated study published semiannually by Escalent, a top human behavior and analytics advisory firm with extensive energy, utility, and brand experience. The 2023 Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement™: Business study tracks the performance of 81 gas, electric and combination utilities to identify brand and customer experience opportunities and trends in the industry. Among these utilities, 17 scored well above their industry peers to be named Business Customer Champions. And of these outstanding utilities, OPPD earned the distinction of first place.

According to Escalent, OPPD and the other high-scoring utilities reinforced their value by taking an active and visible role in the local community and offering easy-to-use options that help business customers reach savings and sustainability goals.

“We continue to work to provide new value to our business and residential customers and to improve their experience,” said Tim McAreavey, vice president of Customer Service. “We will be building upon our efforts to give them more control over their energy usage, among other areas.”

At tonight’s monthly board meeting, directors accepted the SD-5 monitoring report, which means they find OPPD to be sufficiently in compliance with the directive.

Other action

In other action, directors: 

• Approved the December 2023, January 2024 and February 2024 Financial Reports, the March 2024 minutes and the April 18, 2024, agenda.
• Accepted the SD-14: Retirement Plan Funding monitoring report and the SD-4: Reliability monitoring report. Acceptance means the board finds the utility to be sufficiently in compliance with the SD-14 directive and taking reasonable and appropriate measures to comply with the SD-4 directive.
• Approved revisions to the following board policies: Board Staff Linkage (BL) 1: Board-President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Relationship, BL-7: Delegation to the President and CEO, and Governance Process 3: Board Job Description.
• Awarded a contract to Extreme Precision Industrial Contractors LLC in the amount of $1,072,457 to install a new ash piping system at Nebraska City Station Unit 2. The installation, set to take place this summer, will improve safety in the ash disposal process.
• Approved the engineer’s certification and authorized OPPD management to negotiate and enter into a contract or contracts for the replacement of low-pressure turbine blades at North Omaha Station Unit 5.
• Awarded a labor contract to Altitude Energy in the amount of $2,813,547.87 for construction services to rebuild an approximately three-mile transmission line in support of a new substation near Bennington. The project will support load growth in the community.
• Approved a determination pursuant to the Southwest Power Pool tariff on a matter relating to a request by a private developer to interconnect with the district’s transmission system.
• Received the monthly President’s Report, available to view at OPPD.com/BoardMeeting.

Next board meetings

The next all-committees meeting will be held Tuesday, May 14, at 10 a.m. at Blue Cross Blue Shield, 1919 Aksarben Dr. in Omaha. The public may attend this meeting in-person or virtually, via Webex. The meeting link and instructions will be available at OPPD.com/CommitteeAgenda, beginning about 9:45 a.m., depending on the duration of a preceding closed-session meeting, if needed. 

The next monthly board meeting is Thursday, May 16, at 5 p.m., both in-person at the Legislative Chamber of the Omaha Civic Center, 1819 Farnam St. in Omaha, as well as virtually via Webex. Members of the public who wish to attend virtually will be able to access the meeting link and instructions at OPPD.com/BoardAgenda, beginning at 4:45 p.m.