Opportunity
Seattle City Light is a publicly owned electric utility that serves customers in the Seattle metropolitan area and surrounding cities. City Light contacted DHM Research in 2021 with the goal of creating a benchmark survey to assess customer satisfaction, priorities, and awareness of energy efficiency and bill assistance programs. They were especially interested in the opinions of low-income customers, people of color, and multilingual individuals to understand how to improve communication about various City Light programs.
Approach
DHM developed a multi-pronged research approach, including a random sample benchmark survey of residential customers with an oversample of low-income customers and people of color; an online community engagement survey; and focus groups with low-income Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Amharic speaking customers.
Our research revealed that while overall customer satisfaction was high, awareness of energy efficiency and bill assistance programs was low. Lower-income customers who speak a primary language other than English at home experienced additional barriers to awareness and access. The focus groups revealed that customers desired communications in their primary language, energy efficiency programs tailored to renters, and assistance with navigating program enrollment.
DHM has conducted follow-up benchmark surveys in 2023 and 2025 to continue to track changes in satisfaction, priorities, and program awareness. The benchmark surveys are accessible in the top 14 languages spoken in the region: English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Amharic, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Russian, Japanese, Somali, Tigrinya, Oromo, Hindi, and Arabic.
Outcome
Our insights enable Seattle City Light to better align their services with the needs of their customers. The research reveals that while customer satisfaction remains high, City Light can continue to tailor their programs to improve access and awareness among low-income customers, people of color, and multilingual customers. DHM’s work continues to support informed decision making for City Light’s communications, outreach, and programming strategies.
