Issue link: http://alabamapower.uberflip.com/i/722088
CUSTOMER SERVICE 1 Alabama Power has received the top scores for both residential and large business customer service based on Southern Company's proprietary 2016 Customer Value Benchmark (CVB) surveys. It marks the fifth year in a row APC has led the annual ranking of 21 peer utilities for customer service to large businesses, while the company moved from fourth to first overall this year for service to residential customers. Alabama Power improved to a record 9.72 on a scale of 10 in the large business survey. The company has improved its total score each year during its five years at the top. The company again ranked first in six of the eight "key value driver" categories for large business satisfaction, with the top overall score in cost, efficiency, reliability, contact history, outage reporting and account manager performance, while placing second in billing and image. Alabama Power improved its rating from 2015 in outage reporting, moving from No. 2 the previous year to No. 1 in 2016. "Alabama Power has a strong competitive advantage over the upper quartile peer utilities on the cost and image drivers," the report said. "All eight driver scores show improvement from last year, with the most notable improvement on cost (from 9.4 to 9.62)." The company's scores also rose in efficiency by .14, outage reporting (.05), image (.03), account manager performance (.02), billing (.01), contact history (.01) and reliability (.01). In the residential customer survey, Alabama Power improved its score from 8.25 in 2015 to 8.46 this year. "Our ranking improved from No. 4 in 2015 to No. 1 in 2016," said Greg Barker, executive vice president of Customer Services. "It is always rewarding when customers recognize the hard work that Alabama Power employees put into providing the best customer service possible." Alabama Power improved its residential satisfaction scores from last year in seven of the 10 key drivers, and the company's ranking was second or better in seven categories among all companies surveyed. APC was first in bill options, bill statement, energy efficiency and web, and placed second in reliability, image and cost. ALABAMA POWER SETS BENCHMARK SURVEY RECORD FIVE-TIME CHAMPION