Listening to customers is something all loyalty marketers aspire to, but to truly listen to them and understand their needs and expectations can help a company attain brand loyalty. Just ask Piedmont Natural Gas, an energy services company primarily engaged in the distribution of natural gas to more than 1 million residential, commercial, industrial, and power-generation utility customers in portions of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
As a result of truly listening to its customers and acting on invaluable insights gained, Piedmont Natural Gas moved up in the rankings of the J.D. Power 2015 Gas Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study. In fact, Piedmont Natural Gas was named one of the 2015 Most Trusted Brands in the Utility Segment of a nationwide study conducted by Cogent Reports, a division of Market Strategies International.
In the span of just one year, Piedmont moved from the 20th spot in the J.D. Power study to now rank eighth (out of 83 utility companies) in overall customer satisfaction.
“It is a tremendous honor to have gained the trust of our customers,” Cassandra Newsome, Manager – Research and Customer Program Development, Piedmont Natural Gas said to Loyalty360. “We take pride in listening and responding to customer feedback in order to provide–and hopefully exceed–the customer’s expected level of service.”
Newsome said Piedmont measures its customer satisfaction success using several metrics to monitor performance and continually improve the overall customer experience. 
“These metrics include customer loyalty and perception studies, transactional research, and customer satisfaction studies across all business segments,” Newsome explained. “We take the voice of our customer very seriously.”
Earlier this year, Piedmont was listed among the top performers in the Residential Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement study by Cogent Reports. Piedmont ranked second in the natural gas category. The study’s rankings are based on factors of company reputation and advocacy, customer focus, community support, communication effectiveness, environmental dedication, and reliable quality.
J.D. Power measures overall customer satisfaction in six categories, including customer service, corporate citizenship, and communications. The results are based on responses from approximately 66,000 residential customers of 83 large and midsize utilities in the United States.
Newsome said Piedmont defines customer loyalty based on dimensions that relate directly to desired business outcomes.
“This enables us to not only segment our customers based on where they “exist” along the range of outcomes, but provides us with a basis for goal setting and performance management in terms of moving our customers along the loyalty chain,” she explained.