Officials say utilities survey shows county workers excel

Cards sent back by citizens laud response

Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009

The analysis is the result of 83 returned surveys of the 242 comment cards sent to residents — or 32 percent.

"This is such an important tool because the squeaky wheel gets the grease," said Bill Shreve, director of utilities before a presentation at the commissioners' meeting last week. "You've probably only heard about bad [calls] … but this survey shows 95 [percent] to 98 percent of our customers are very satisfied."

"Since the department is committed to providing excellent customer service we wanted to measure how well we were doing," said utilities Administration Manager Robin Byrd. "A lot of times when customer service calls come in, the work is completed without the homeowner being home .They may not know we've even been there."

Over an eight-month period the department of utilities responded to 242 customer calls ranging from flooding to sewer odors to sinkholes and leaks. Each time the county sent a department representative, a customer satisfaction card was sent to the resident after the work was completed at the administrative cost of roughly $1.50 per card. Questions covered response time, problem resolution and employee demeanor.

The county conducted a similar survey six or seven years ago, Byrd said, and when Shreve began his employment with the county after leaving St. Mary's County, he had expressed interest in introducing the survey back into the department.

Nearly 90 percent of the returned and completed surveys indicated a good or excellent degree of overall satisfaction, an overwhelming majority of the opinions in the excellent range.

Because the department had chosen to honor the wishes of residents who said they did not want to be contacted after the survey, the reasons for the few customers who answered with a fair, poor or don't know response were not all resolved, Byrd said.

The administration manager said the department was considering adding more space for comment on future survey cards to address the privacy issue for residents.

Eighty percent of the surveyed customers said their problems had been resolved, and Shreve said there was follow-up resolution when the county was allowed to contact the residents with remaining problems.

Of the 83 surveys returned, the majority of problems were sewer backups and sewer cap replacements.

"We don't really have control over what people flush down their toilets," Shreve said prior to the presentation. "Typically most of the water issues come up in the spring and summer. It's when we sell the most water."

Commissioners' Vice President Edith J. Patterson (D) asked about measures that have been put in place by the department to encourage residents to call the county before they turn to a private plumber and suggestions to help residents learn how to maintain their sewer systems, which in turn will reduce the number of service calls.

Shreve said there is correspondence in billing envelopes from time to time and there is information on the county Web site.

"We try to communicate that we want to be called first on sewer backups," Shreve said. "There's the whole issue of responsibility and where the property line ends, where a customer's responsibility starts and where our responsibility starts. We'd like to be called first to make sure all our systems are OK. What will happen is a plumber will go out and try to resolve the issue and it ends up being pushed into our side and we end up with a cost that could have been prevented."

Shreve said the department is continuing to work on communication with residents about correct waste management, including the Greasebuster program that addresses dumping fats, oils and grease.

Shreve said he was not sure whether more problems mentioned in the survey were concentrated in one area of the county over another, but he did say the county provides sewer and water service to only about half of the county residents, a majority of them living in the development district.

Other inquiries on the survey gathered a 92 percent positive nod for timely initial responses, 88 percent satisfaction with overall response time, 88 percent of customers were happy with the professionalism and manners of the department's employees and 84 percent of residents approved of the quality of work done on their property.

"This program is real important for a number of reasons. We're going to be developing a key performance indicator that will tie to this as a running total. I'd like to see [the numbers] in the 95-plus range positive on all of them," Shreve said. "This is also going to be used as a tool to train our employees. We share this information with the staff. It also allows us to adjust our schedule to respond better to the customers."

While Shreve is focused on getting a high percentage of satisfied customers within the surveyed group, the opposite holds true when it comes to getting general feedback.

"When we did this in St Mary's County, we were getting about a 30 to 45 percent return rate, which we thought was great. As things got better and our customers got more familiar with the fact we were providing quality service … the last time I checked they were down to about a 15 percent return rate on their surveys, which to me indicates there's not a whole lot of problems with their customer service."

The county's utilities department is responsible for more than 25,000 water connections and 160 water and sewer facilities. The staff is also charged with providing the county with clean and safe drinking water and advanced treatment of wastewater.

The department is considered an enterprise fund, which means it is not part of the county's general fund and must rely on user funds to maintain operations.

msomers@somdnews.com