Duquesne Light Company Named Residential Customer Champion Among U.S. Utility Peers
Recognition demonstrates company’s commitment to bring a trusted partner to customers and community
January 30, 2024
Duquesne Light Company (DLC) was recently recognized as a 2023 Residential Customer Champion in a Cogent Syndicated report from Escalent, a renowned data analytics and advisory firm specializing in the energy and utility sector. The report evaluated 141 utilities across the U.S., naming DLC among the top 34 for building engaged relationships with customers across southwestern Pennsylvania, including the city of Pittsburgh. Companies that were named Customer Champions outperformed their peers in areas such as environmental action, innovation and community engagement.
On a scale of 1 to 1,000, DLC achieved a rating of 711 and earned a top 15 ranking for utilities in the East region. The achievement underscores DLC’s commitment to serving as a trusted partner to its customers and communities and demonstrating value beyond basic energy service delivery, including in its mission to drive a clean energy future for all.
In 2023, DLC took several steps to support customers and communities, including:
- Continuing to assist and promote affordability options to customers, including a $25,000 contribution to support customers through its HomeServe partnership; frequent communications about payment assistance programs; and increased customer education on supplier choice and “price to compare”.
- Launching multiple “ease of use” services to provide customers with more reliable service, including fully automated start/stop/transfer service; new payment options for customers such as Apple Pay, Venmo and PayPal; two-way text messaging; and a redesigned homepage of the company’s website to enhance user experience.
- Communicating the company’s energy efficiency programs that are designed help customers reduce electricity consumption by offering rebates and energy conservation assistance to make bills more affordable. These opportunities include a whole-house energy audit, money-saving rebates and appliance recycling.
- Contributing more than 4,300 volunteer hours and gifting more than $1.8 million in charitable giving in both Allegheny and Beaver counties.
“At DLC, we’re committed to putting the customer at the center of everything we do and strive to be a customer champion each and every day,” said Kristy Stone, DLC’s chief customer officer. “We’re honored to be recognized for those efforts as we continue to work on providing the best experience for our customers.”
About Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement™: Residential
Escalent conducted surveys among 65,523 residential electric, natural gas and combination utility customers of the 141 largest US utility companies (based on residential customer counts). The sample design uses a combination of quotas and weighting based on US census data to ensure a demographically balanced sample of each evaluated utility’s customers based on age, gender, income, race and ethnicity. Utilities within the same region and of the same type (e.g., electric-only providers) are given equal weight to balance the influence of each utility’s customers on survey results.