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Corning Natural Gas Customer Satisfaction Survey Program

1. Background and Research Methodology Background Corning Natural Gas Corporation is an investor owned local distribution company that provides natural gas, transportation, storage and other unbundled energy services. The service territory, encompassing an area of approximately 400 square miles, is located in the Finger Lakes area of the Southern Tier and Central regions of New York State. Corning Natural Gas is franchised to serve political subdivisions utilizing over 400 miles of pipeline and 15,000 meters. The Company provides wholesale gas delivery services to NYSEG in Elmira, N. Y. and to Bath Electric, Gas and Water Systems in Bath, N. Y. The mission for Customer Service at Corning Natural Gas Corporation is to maximize customer satisfaction by providing competitively priced energy services safely, reliably and efficiently. The Company maintains a walk in customer service center that is completely focused on meeting the needs of all of our customers, whether residential or commercial. There is staff dedicated to expeditiously managing the customer service experience. This includes changes in service, bill payment, payment agreements, access to HEAP funding, availability of energy efficiency incentives and fielding questions about gas service, energy cost comparisons and the like. Corning’s customer service staff routinely handles in excess of 2,000 to 2,500 walk-in customers each month of the year. In addition, Company personnel talk to 3,000 to 4,000 additional customers via telephone each month. The purpose of maintaining the walk in service center is to be certain that customers have easy access to Company personnel during all business hours each working day. Corning’s history of customer complaints is nearly immeasurable as a percentage of the customer base. It is very common to have years with four or less PSC complaints. This translates to less than two-tenths of one percent of our customers. In an effort to monitor, maintain and possibly improve our customer service experience the Company has engaged Metrix Matrix, Inc. to develop and design a Customer Satisfaction Measurement program to be incorporated into the Customer Service Performance Incentive (CSPI) outlined in the Company’s latest Joint Proposal (NYS PSC Case 11-G-0280), effective May 2012.

The Goal of the Survey Measure and monitor ongoing satisfaction of residential and commercial customers who have recently initiated or completed a transaction with Corning Natural Gas personnel related to areas of bill payments, meter application or disconnect, emergency calls and/or other areas of customer service or gas service operations.

Survey Design The telephone questionnaire will be designed to present customers with an average of not more than 20 questions that will average between 3 and 5 minutes for completion. Skip logic based on client provided data and/or customer’s responses to previous questions will ensure only relevant questions are asked of each customer.

Corning Natural Gas Customer Satisfaction Survey Program

A compound questionnaire with a set of common core questions and separate topic specific questions will allow a single design and setup while monitoring satisfaction within both residential and commercial customer bases on specific topics.

Sample Design The sample plan is designed to provide representative results for customers having recently contacted Corning Natural Gas in areas stated in the Goal above with a minimum 95% confidence level and a maximum margin of error not greater than plus or minus 5% over a 12 month period. To achieve these results, Corning Natural Gas will provide Metrix Matrix with weekly or monthly, depending on the subject, contact files containing all customers who initiated or completed a transaction in the previous period regarding the topics stated in the Goal above. Once the contact data is provided to Metrix Matrix, records will be assigned an automatically generated random index number, which is later sorted upon in order to remove any sorts or segmentation introduced by the list origin. This assures a purely random sample.

Sample Size For Corning Natural Gas, Metrix Matrix will complete a minimum of 40 surveys per month for a total of 480 surveys per year. This provides statistical reporting at 95% confidence level with margin of error of 8.9% quarterly, 6.3% semi-annually and 4.4% annually. At this level of reporting, Corning Natural Gas can monitor trends throughout the year and provide year-end results to the NYS PSC with confidence that the result represent the targeted population (total customer interactions with the Company).

Administration of Surveys The process below outlines the milestone steps for getting started as well as the production phase of the project. Incorporated throughout the entire process are our system’s security and features as well as quality processing. Pre-Survey Data Processing for Telephone Surveys  Corning Natural Gas provides data sets weekly to Metrix Matrix.  Duplicate records are removed (by Metrix Matrix) based on a mutually agreed (with the Company) upon unique identifier.  Recently contacted customers are removed based upon a specified do-not-call time frame – typically 90 days.  Records are assigned an automatically generated random index number by Metrix Matrix, which is later sorted upon in order to remove any sorts or segmentation introduced by the list origin. This will assure a purely random sample.  Resulting data set is imported into the Metrix Matrix proprietary production system for telephone calls. Survey Process  Metrix Matrix completes 40 telephone surveys evenly distributed throughout the month (one or two surveys completed daily).  Gas Emergency Hot Transfers are provided for customers who may be experiencing a gas leak or related emergency.

Corning Natural Gas Customer Satisfaction Survey Program

Post-Survey Process  Metrix Matrix performs QA procedures on collected data to include data-scrubbing and review of recorded surveys.

Tabulation of Results and Reporting Requirements Annually, Corning Natural Gas will send a letter regarding their Customer Satisfaction Survey results to the NYS PSC. Annual results will be an average of Residential and Commercial customer responses to “Overall Satisfaction” weighted based on number of responses for residential vs. commercial customers. The percent satisfied calculation will represent customers who responded with an 8, 9, or 10 on a 1 to 10 scale.

Benchmarking Results A customer focused approach to benchmarking results can be determined after accumulating 12 months of data at which time a statistically valid approach can be used to set thresholds.