Regulated Service Provider Service Quality Plans and Reports:

Archived Reports

Owners of gas and electric utilities have always been required to provide safe and adequate service. With the proclamation of the new Electric Utilities Act, S.A. 2003, on June 1, 2003 (EUA) and the Gas Utilities Statutes Amendment Act, 2003, S.A. 2003, on June 15, 2003 (GUA), the AUC’s predecessor, the EUB, gained the legislative authority to make and enforce rules respecting service quality standards. This new legislation also authorizes the AUC to impose penalties on utilities and regulated rate providers and to require the payment of credits to customers as compensation for the utilities' failure to meet the rules respecting service quality standards.

In response to this new legislative authority, the EUB took steps to ensure the continued provision of high quality customer service to customers receiving electricity or gas services under a regulated rate tariff. First, the EUB developed and introduced a draft service quality plan. The plan included requirements to report statistics on important components of customer service. These components were telephone access to the company, billing timeliness and accuracy, timely response to customer disputes and interaction with customers in a prompt, courteous and satisfactory manner.

Working through a collaborative process, the EUB then invited stakeholders to provide feedback to the EUB on its proposed service quality plan. The EUB met with stakeholders in a series of meetings and developed the initial performance measures and performance monitoring and reporting requirements.

The AUC issued Rule 003, Regulated Service Provider (RSP) Service Standard and Reliability Performance, Monitoring, and Reporting Rules, which set out the standards by which the utility's customer service performance will be measured, and requires the utility to monitor and report the results of its performance in these areas. Given that detailed benchmarking information had not been universally available prior to the issuance of Rule 003, the standards outlined in the plans did not immediately attract penalties for non-performance, with the exception of the $75 credit for customers disconnected from service in error.

The AUC believes the Service Quality and Reliability Plans will provide benefits to ratepayers. These benefits include:

• more comprehensive service monitoring;
• supplying public information on the level of service a company is providing;
• the establishment of a database from which to set future utility performance targets;
• expected financial penalties (for poor utility performance) in future AUC Service Quality and Reliability Plans.
  

To date, the regulated service providers have been successful in achieving the standards established for all the measures of customer service. In the area of billing performance, it became evident that the initial standards for timeliness and accuracy were set too low.  The EUB discussed this matter with the regulated service providers collectively as part of the annual review of the results.  All were in agreement with the EUB's proposal to reset the standards to more closely reflect the actual performance in the market.

Consequently, the EUB revised the standards for billing timeliness and accuracy performance effective January 1, 2006.  Starting on that date, the performance standards will require that no more than 0.500% of the bills rendered to customers fall outside the scheduled billing date and that no more than 1.00% of the bills rendered to customers are found to be inaccurate.  The standard for both performance measures was initially set at 3.00%.