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Seattle City Light Ranked Highest Midsize Utility In The West By Its Business Customers

 

Photo of JD Power and Associates award.

Seattle City Light ranked first among all US midsize utilities for business customer satisfaction.

Business customers rated Seattle City Light highest among all US midsize utilities in the J.D. Power and Associates 2013 Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study released this week. City Light also tied for third place nationally among all 95 utilities ranked by the survey results.

This is the highest rating City Light has ever achieved in the J.D. Power study. Last year, City Light was No. 4 in the West Midsize category and No. 10 overall nationally.

“2012 was a significant year for City Light,” said Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn. “We asked our customers to support an ambitious six-year strategic plan that focuses on customer service and reliability while investing in the workforce and realizing efficiencies through technology and business process improvements. This award is a testament that our customers believe the city and our utility has laid out the right direction for the future. I thank them for their support.”

“The rating by our customers is a tremendous vote of confidence for the men and women of City Light who work hard to demonstrate that excellent customer service is their goal, and they are delivering on it each and every day,” added Seattle City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco. “There isn’t any one thing that resulted in our receiving this award. It’s a combination of hard work, listening to our customers, and doing a quality job each and every day.”

Seattle City Light serves 36,000 business customers throughout its service territory that includes all of the City of Seattle, Shoreline and Lake Forest Park, and parts of Burien, Normandy Park, Tukwila, Renton and unincorporated King County. In all, City Light has about 410,000 business and residential customers.

“This is tremendous news,” echoed Seattle City Council member Mike O’Brien, chair of the Council’s Energy & Environment Committee. “Seattle City Light is a national leader on issues important to our business community, including reliability; clean, low cost power; environmental stewardship; corporate citizenship, and keeping our customers well informed. Last year when we were talking to the business community about the strategic plan, they gave us great insight and suggestions on how to create a plan that serves everyone in the community well. It was obvious the great pride they take in their electric utility.”

The award reflects what costumers themselves think about the product or service.

Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States. It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle area residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.

J.D. Power and Associates is a leading global marketing information services company that conducts independent consumer surveys of product and service quality, customer satisfaction, and buyer behavior. Each year, J.D. Power interacts with millions of consumers around the world to better understand their opinions, perceptions, and expectations about a variety of products and services.