We're listening: Customer Satisfaction Survey results
April 13, 2011
As is tradition, TransCanada shares the results of the annual Canadian and Eastern U.S. Pipelines Customer Satisfaction Survey with customer through Update magazine each year. Late last Fall, 121 representatives of TransCanada’s customers were surveyed by phone for the 2010 survey, plus an additional 10 follow-up in-depth surveys were conducted with a selection of senior executives.
Now in its 10th year, the annual survey gives TransCanada comparative data year over year measured against a benchmark. Perhaps more importantly, through the process of drilling down for feedback, an excellent snapshot of how our customers view our customer service, communication and information, staff, call centre, transactional systems, transportation services, problem resolution, as well as a comparative assessment in various elements of service to other North American Pipelines that customers may also use for their natural gas transportation needs.
TransCanada always finds the results insightful. Customers continue to reinforce that, overall, we are doing things right and compare favourably to other pipelines in North America. There is, however, growing concern raised and shared in the survey over the Canadian Mainline, in particular the decreasing throughput and its consequent upward pressure on tolls. This is reflected in the answers to various questions in the survey.
Karl Johannson, Senior Vice-President for Canadian and Eastern U.S. Pipelines appreciates the time spent by our customers to provide this valuable input, “Being new to this role, I appreciate the opportunity to get a good sense of how our customers feel about the level of service and areas where we interact. I am certainly pleased with the feedback in the sense of the good things we are doing, and will commit to carefully assessing areas where we need to continue our efforts to ensure these levels of satisfactions are maintained or improved as needed.”
Survey Highlights
Overall, customer’s satisfaction with the interactions with TransCanada staff remained very positive, as measured at the executive, manager, front line, and call centre level.
Overall level of service also remained high, however a trend of about the same number of customers who thought the service had improved over last year, felt the service has lessened. The trend in past surveys has always shown a greater number of respondents feeling the level of service had improved.
Since overall satisfaction has been a benchmark measurement for the past 10 years, it is a good comparative measure. In 2010 it showed a slight decrease in the levels of satisfaction compared to 2009. This is the second year that this measure has been slightly down (80% level of satisfaction in 2009 to 77% in 2010). This will be an area of focus for 2011 as we try to regain the levels we have previously experienced in the high 80% to 90% range of previous years. (see graph)
Customers felt very strongly that they have had an opportunity to provide input in their dealing with TransCanada, with only 4% responding that they would have preferred additional opportunity.
Satisfaction with TransCanada’s transactional systems and the call centre remains stellar, with 100% of the customers indicating they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the transactional systems and only 3% of the respondents indicating they were not satisfied with the call centre.
When asked to draw a comparison with other pipelines, this year’s survey identified strong results in the areas of staff, transactional systems and transportation services, however price and value compared to other pipelines was considerably weaker. (see graph at right).
On TransCanada’s strengths, the most cited examples were better customer interaction/ service, overall better communication, streamlined operations and an experienced, knowledgeable team. Areas of weaknesses included being expensive, the toll structure not being competitive and/or aligned with evolving markets, and service charges.
About the Survey:
- Customer Satisfaction research was conducted with Canadian and Eastern U.S. Pipelines customers in October and November 2010.
- Research instruments were jointly developed by TransCanada and Ipsos Reid.
- The approximate margin of error for questions asked across all respondents is +/- 6.7 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
“Once again, I would like to thank all of our customer participants for their time and input to this process. I value this type of input from our customers and want to assure you that we will continue to take action to maintain results we are proud of as well as on the opportunities for improvement that are identified in the survey,” explains Johannson.
The Canadian and Eastern U.S. Pipelines customer survey is conducted for TransCanada by Ipsos Reid, a global market research firm with offices in Calgary and Toronto. The sample is based on a broad cross-section of customers.
For more information on the Customer Satisfaction Survey, please contact Rob Jack.
