Utility pledges lower rates, better service

ST. PETERSBURG -- Florida Power president William Habermeyer pledged Wednesday to improve service and lower electric rates for the utility's 1.4-million customers.

More than a year after the North Carolina company now called Progress Energy took over Florida Power, the utility has made improvements but still lags behind its sister company in handling customer problems and service reliability, he said.

"Are we satisfied? No, otherwise we wouldn't be doing this," Habermeyer said. "But we'll get there. I'm very confident of that."

The three-year plan presented to employees last week and released publicly Wednesday calls for:

Improved customer service. Call center workers, field crews and meter readers will be trained to be friendlier and more accommodating. The company will make more accurate estimates of the length of power outages, so customers can better deal with long outages.

Better reliability. Customers were without power for an average of nearly 90 minutes last year, about 10 fewer minutes than in 2000. Florida Power is aiming to reduce that to 80 minutes by 2004 by spending $100-million on new power lines and other transmission hardware.

Lower rates. The bill for a typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours a month dropped by $1.76 to $91.65 on Jan. 1, thanks to lower power plant fuel costs. That bill would drop to about $87 by 2004 under a proposal Florida Power made to state regulators as part of an ongoing review of its rates.

A big part of the plan involves changing how Florida Power compensates employees and holding them accountable, Habermeyer said.

The company wants to tie pay more closely to performance, he said. Florida Power will require that all employees get face-to-face evaluations with career-development goals. Only 40 percent received such evaluations when he took over in December 2000, Habermeyer said.

More than half of Florida Power's 4,600 employees are represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, so pay changes must be negotiated when talks on a new contract begin later this year.

Butch Enyard, business agent for the union, likes Habermeyer's goals. But he heard similar plans from former Florida Power executives, Enyard said.

"We're in favor of anything that enables employees to do a better job serving customers," he said. "But I've seen this before. The proof is in the pudding."

Habermeyer examined Florida Power's internal review standards after arriving from Carolina Power & Light and found them lacking.

"We tended to say we were doing great but didn't compare ourselves with anything (outside the company) that measured excellence," he said.

J.D. Powers and Associates ranks Florida Power just above the middle of the pack among utilities in the Southeast for customer service.

In another customer satisfaction survey, Florida Power scores between 75 and 80 on a scale of 100. CP&L scores 86 or 87, Habermeyer said.

At a meeting for financial analysts in Naples last week, the executive who oversees call centers for both of Progress Energy's electric utilities acknowledged the performance in Florida had some catching up to do.

"It's not where we want it to be," said Fred Day, executive vice president of energy delivery. "Florida will be up to the level of performance in the Carolinas, but it will take some time."

Florida's utility consumer advocate, Public Counsel Jack Shreve, wants Florida Power's new rates cut $7.5-million a year as a penalty for poor customer service.

He claims customer calls to the state Public Service Commission about Florida Power jumped 33 percent last year.

The utility says the increase in complaints was 7 percent, not an unusually high number considering that Tropical Storm Gabrielle knocked out power to about 400,000 customers in September.

The state Public Service Commission is scheduled to hold hearings on the utility's rates next month, with a decision set for June.

But Florida Power, Shreve's office, large customers and the commission staff are in talks to negotiate a rate settlement before the hearings.

-- Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

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