MAINE, USA — Leaders with Central Maine Power say the utility company has made major strides in improving customer service over recent months.
"We dug in, we did a lot of hard work, we hired people, we trained people, we changed the organization, and we really tried implementing a culture that says customers come first," said CMP Vice President of Customer Service Linda Ball.
The improvement efforts to CMP's customer service system comes after new benchmarks were set by the Maine Public Utilities Commission in early January of 2020. CMP also lost out on roughly $10 million in earnings over an 18 month period, as ordered by the PUC for issues with customer service.
"We were really focused on improving customer service and the experience of customers for CMP, so we put in place a number of metrics that they were required to meet for a minimum of 18 months and reduced their earnings over that 18 month period while they were making improvement," said Maine PUC Chair Phil Bartlett.
According to Ball, CMP has now met those metrics over the 18 month period and filed information with the Maine PUC in efforts to have earnings restored.
"I think a lot of it is one customer at a time, and I think people have to look at their bills and understand the value they're getting for the money, and have good conversations with us and appreciate that we are the neighbors, the people in the same communities, that are doing our best to do the right job every day for our customers," said Ball.
According to CMP spokesperson Catharine Hartnett, over the last 18 months, CMP has reached customer service improvement including answering more than 87% of customer calls within 30 seconds, providing timely, accurate bills over 99 percent of the time, and proactively applying a $25 credit to any bill that is not delivered on time.
The Maine PUC will now review improvements made by CMP.
"The service quality metrics have demonstrated some improvement, we'll dig more deeply into that in this process. And we know that the complaints are significantly less than what they were. Beyond that, I think we'll continue to evaluate their overall performance," said Bartlett.
Bartlett said the review process of CMP's improvements will include representatives from the utility company, the public advocate, and close review of how CMP is improving based on their metrics. There is no set timeline of when the review will be completed, however, Bartlett said it will not be an extraordinarily long process.