Nobody Should Have to Ask Me
A member stopped me a few weeks back. Not a complainer. Very friendly. Somebody I know and like.
She told me our linemen are some of the hardest-working people she's ever been around, and that they deserve every bit of credit they get. I agreed with her. Then she told me the rest of it. She said when she calls the office, she never knows what she is going to get.
I stayed quiet and let her finish. That is the kind of thing I need to hear, and I do not hear it enough. Member experience is not just how fast we get your power back. It's explaining right of way before the outage happens, answering a question about a bill, and walking someone through what it takes to build a new service.
Here is what I have come to believe after twenty-four years in this business, most of them at a cooperative. Members do not want things from us. What members really want is to not worry about their service.
That is it. That is the whole job.
Nobody wakes up hoping to think about their electric cooperative. You want the lights on. You want the bill to make sense. You want a straight answer when you call. Give a member all three, and we never cross their mind again. Being forgettable is the goal. I am fine with that.
Where we have fallen short is not out there. It’s inside the walls. How well we communicate with one another translates into how we communicate with our members.
Since the day I started at Petit Jean, the answer to almost any question was with a person. Not a policy. Not a procedure. A person.
Somebody would call about getting new service, and the answer depended on who picked up the call.
Somebody would ask when the power was coming back on. What they got back, they told me, depended on who picked up the phone. Call on Tuesday, get one answer. Call on Thursday, get another. For me, that’s a problem that needs fixing.
I have described it to people; it’s like being a manager at a local Pizza Hut. Somebody calls up and says I did not order onions on my pizza; I want to talk to the manager. And the manager is always me. A pizza manager can fix an order, but a CEO of an electric cooperative depends on a team of managers to handle many issues all at once.
Now hear me on this next part, because I do not want it landing on the wrong people. This is not a member services problem. Those folks answer the phone with whatever we have handed them, and for a long time we did not hand them much. This is a process problem, and it starts in the building. But it’s also a management problem that starts with me.
So here’s what we’re going to do about it. Along with my team of managers, we're going to focus on your member experience. Rules of the road, policies, checklists – the steps it takes from the day you call to the day it is done. Nothing flashy. Nobody is putting it on a billboard. Just the nuts and bolts of running a great co-op.
What we are after is the same experience for every member, every time. That is the goal. Whether that is a phone call about your lights or a charge on your bill. Every member is treated with the same care from the same structure.
Here is what that ought to look like from your side. You call us. Whoever answers can tell you where things stand, because it is written down and they can see it. If it is going to be another three hours, somebody tells you it is going to be another three hours. And if that changes, you hear it from us before you have to ask again. That’s the goal we’re working towards right now.
That is the whole ambition. It isn’t fancy. It isn’t terribly complex. It is a straightforward goal to improve your member experience.
I will give you an honest reason, too. I do not want to always have to be the answer. I want all our people armed with the knowledge to make good decisions without having to walk down the hall to find me. That’s the difference between an organization that depends on its leader and an organization that is inspired by one. And I know which of the two stands the test of time.
None of this means throwing out who we are. We are not abandoning our traditions. We are not abandoning our culture. We are certainly not abandoning the people we serve. We are renewing our faith in a system that has been working for eighty-five years. We are investing in our people. We are investing in our leadership. And we are investing in our cooperative.
Rules create habits. Habits keep our employees safe. Safe employees keep your lights on. That means you never have to think about us.
That has always been the job.
Michael D. Kirkland
CEO, Petit Jean Electric Cooperative