Customer Service Guarantees
At Avista, we strive to provide the best customer service possible. So we always listen to your feedback and constantly track how well we’re doing. To make sure you’re receiving the service you expect, we offer Customer Service Guarantees to our Washington electric and natural gas customers beginning January 1, 2016.
We guarantee that we will...
- Keep service appointments
- Restore your service within 24 hours of reporting an outage
- Turn on your power within a day of receiving the request
- Provide a cost estimate for new electric or natural gas service within 10 business days of receiving the necessary information
- Investigate and respond to a billing inquiry within 10 business days if we are unable to answer your question on first contact
- Investigate a reported meter problem or conduct a meter test and report the results to you within 20 days
- Notify you at least 24 hours in advance of a planned power outage lasting longer than 5 minutes
If you are a Washington electric or natural gas customer, in the event we fail to deliver on a guarantee, a $50 credit will be applied automatically to your account and reflected on your bill.
However, there are some circumstances in which the guarantee credits do not apply:
- If you cancel or fail to meet an appointment or if we reschedule the appointment with at least 24 hours notice.
- A major weather event that impacts a large number of customers or lasts for a longer period of time, such as a major snow, ice, or wind storm.
- An action or default by someone other than our employees that is outside our control.
- Construction is required before your service can be energized, evidence that all required government inspections have been satisfied has not been received by us, required payments to us have not been received, or service has been disconnected for non-payment or there has been theft/diversion of electric service.
- When power is interrupted for less than five minutes, power is interrupted because of work on a meter, or the safety of the public or our employees or the imminent failure of our equipment was a factor causing the interruption in your service.
Performance Standards
Providing the best customer service possible also includes making sure we meet our electric and natural gas customer service and electric system reliability targets. We are committed to:
- Achieving at least 90 percent customer satisfaction rating when calling our customer service center
- Achieving at least 90 percent customer satisfaction rating for our electric and natural gas field services
- Providing service that results in 0.4 or fewer complaints per 1,000 customers that are filed each calendar year with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission
- Answering a call within 60 seconds at least 80 percent of the time when a customer requests to speak with a representative
- Averaging 80 minutes or less when responding to electric system emergencies throughout the year
- Averaging 55 minutes or less when responding to natural gas system emergencies throughout the year
- Customer satisfaction is based on customers who respond as “satisfied” or “very satisfied” to our quarterly survey which is conducted by an independent survey contractor
- An electric system emergency is when police/fire are standing by, arcing/flashing wires are down or a feeder is locked out
- A natural gas system emergency is when there is a natural gas explosion or fire, fire in the vicinity of natural gas facilities, police or fire are standing by, leaks identified in the field as “Grade 1”, high or low gas pressure problem identified by alarms or customer calls, natural gas system alarms, carbon monoxide calls, natural gas order calls, runaway furnace calls or delayed ignition calls
- Response time for an electric and a natural gas system emergency is measured from the time a customer call is received until a field service technician arrives at the site
- Electric response times are excluded from the performance standards during a major weather event