 OUR TAKE -
A Crisis of Trust
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An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
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Will Rogers
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I haven't been a PG&E customer for more than a decade. No, I didn't disconnect from the power grid. I simply moved outside their service area. However, many of my good California friends are now dealing with a crisis of trust.
The utility did a bad job of responding to complaints about inaccurate bills produced by the high-tech SmartMeters now being rolled out. They initially denied any problems. Later they reported only "a few" customers received inaccurate bills. And now, PG&E acknowledges that the "vast majority" of 23,000 meters produced inaccurate gas bills.
A representative of the company publicly stated, "While we have confidence in this technology, some of our customers question whether they can have faith in our SmartMeter program, and frankly in PG&E. Restoring this trust is absolutely critical to us."
I do not share this story to pick on PG&E. Rather, let's use this example to ask a few questions about how your organization would handle such a situation. First question, what do you think this company can do to restore trust? What's your take? More tomorrow.
Gary Lemke, Publisher
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