Using Customer Engagement to Ensure Pilot Success

THE NEED

JEA is Florida's largest municipal electricity service provider, serving approximately 350,000 residential customers in the greater Jacksonville community. In 2019, JEA developed a year-long pilot to test new rate structures, exploring innovative and more sustainable revenue models.

OUR APPROACH

JEA enlisted Milepost's expertise in building tailored strategies to help the utility successfully engage more than 3,000 residential customers who were randomly selected to participate in the pilot program. Working across multiple departments and communications channels, we created a customized approach to help JEA educate customers, retain participants and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction throughout the pilot. Additionally, we created participatory market research activities to provide a direct feedback pipeline from pilot customers to JEA leadership.

THE RESULTS

The outcomes of our engagement support were multifaceted. Milepost was able to help JEA deliver on the following:

• Initial market research through telephone surveys, speaking with JEA customers about their preferences and concerns in enrolling in a new rate
• A series of four focus group sessions with pilot participants to solicit customer reactions and feedback regarding communications preferences, messaging content and touchpoints 
• Listening sessions with specially trained members of the utility’s call center to identify anticipated training and resource needs and to collect feedback from conversations they had with pilot participants
• Strategies for engaging community stakeholders in meeting the needs of lower-income households participating in the rate

OUR ROLE

• Stakeholder Engagement
• Market Research
• Data Collection & Reporting
• Messaging & Storytelling
• Facilitation