• Success for an electric utility has three pieces: technical performance, customer satisfaction and financial success.
• Customer satisfaction may pose the biggest challenge because it requires communication that seldom happened in the past.
• Consumers are beginning to ask what they are getting for the money they spend on utility bills and what options there are.

From the article: "What we really want is an optimal system: one that provides the best balance of technical performance, customer satisfaction, and utility financial success - the three legs of the electric utility success stool. Of these three success factors, the toughest one to achieve may be customer satisfaction. That may sound a little surprising because in the past we haven't, in general, heard much grumbling from utility ratepayers regarding system performance. In fact, we really haven't heard much from customers at all. ..."