I posted yesterday about the ice storm that hit the midwest and how I struggled without electricity. Once everything was back to normal, I logged on Facebook to see if anyone was still without power that I could help. I would’ve been happy to loan out a generator to someone in need.
That’s when I noticed a pretty big difference in how our area’s two energy companies handled the outages.
REMC posted regularly (at LEAST every 3 hours… more often most of the time) on Facebook advising their customers how many homes were still without power and how many had already been restored. They shared photos and apologies. They let everyone know they were working as quickly as possible to restore power.
Duke Energy, on the other hand, posted only ONE update. There’s an ice storm; be careful; check on family; we’re working on it. That’s it!
What struck me is that neither are being social as a marketing tactic to attain new customers — you get what you get. I have Duke and can’t choose REMC — therefore; the perception is that REMC truly cares more about the people they serve.
Duke might say they provide a service to their customers where outage statuses can be easily checked. Below is what I found online after being without power for over 8 hours:
Interesting… right? Now I know Duke was working to get power restored as quickly as possible, but as a frustrated (suffering!) customer, I wouldn’t have minded a little encouragement. Thing is… they won’t lose one single customer because they didn’t provide an experience like REMC. You get what you get.