AEP Ohio Achieves Six-Fold Customer Engagement with Automated Email Surveys

Challenge

AEP Ohio was looking for an easy way to analyze how its energy efficiency programs performed based on customer feedback.

Solution

To determine customer satisfaction with the energy utility’s energy efficiency programs, Questline Digital created email surveys to send to participating residential and small business customers. The automated campaign featured dynamic coding that produced a specific email survey for each EE program. Since AEP Ohio didn’t want to take up customers’ time with a long survey, the emails utilized a simple sliding scale from 1 to 10.

Results

AEP Ohio received valuable feedback to better understand the performance of its EE programs. The surveys helped the energy utility to improve future customer service efforts.

The residential and business email surveys experienced strong customer engagement with a 37% and 34% open rate, respectively. The residential survey had a 31% click-through rate, which is five times the industry benchmark. Similarly, the business survey had a 36% click-through rate, nearly six times the industry benchmark.

About AEP Ohio   

AEP Ohio serves nearly 1.5 million customers in Ohio, providing power to more than 920 communities located in 61 of the state’s 88 counties. AEP Ohio is a subsidiary of American Electric Power and the largest of its regional utility divisions.

AEP Ohio’s business email survey experienced a 36% click-through rate, nearly six times the industry benchmark.

“This automated program revolves entirely around customer satisfaction. It enables AEP Ohio to find out how our energy efficiency programs perform and how our technicians are doing. The email surveys also allow us to learn more about a customer, so we can offer them information on other energy efficiency programs.”
—Andy McCabe, Manager of Business Programs, AEP Ohio