Energy Industry Intel & Commentary
Customer satisfaction can be a valuable tool for energy industry suppliers, as it provides providers and customers with both qualitative and quantitative insight.
Continue reading “Customer Ratings — Global Energy Industry Suppliers”
Part 1 of this series presented evidence that mergers, on average, destroy rather than create value. Taking customers for granted, sometimes ignoring them altogether, is one reason why.
Continue reading “M&A: Customer Friend or Foe? – Part 2”
With shrinking E&P budgets, weak commodity prices, the rise of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, the need for greater emphasis on customer satisfaction in the oil and gas industry has never been stronger. Providers of midstream services, and their stakeholders, ignore the evidence at their own peril.
Results from EnergyPoint Research’s 2019 Oil & Gas Midstream Services Survey make the case, as companies rating in the top third of the survey register investor returns well in excess of the bottom third. Continue reading “Rule of Thirds: Breaking It Down in the Midstream”
EnergyPoint conducts its independent surveys annually. This schedule allows rated upstream, midstream and downstream energy companies to track their performance over time. The goal is encourage continual improvement and a “race-to-the-top” mentality.
Pricing and contract terms, service and professionalism, engineering and design, operations, and others attributes are measured in our surveys. Results are detailed in published reports. These include 1-to-10 point ratings, top-to-bottom rankings, evaluation counts, ratings means and medians. Continue reading “A Simple But Powerful Tool”
Yes, it pays to keep customers smiling—even in the midstream.
As midstream activity marches on in North America, customers show preferences for providers with strong operating and project-development skills. Professionalism also matters.
The need for solutions is diverse and widespread. Constraints in West Texas―ground zero of U.S. shale-oil production―crimp output. Natural gas in Appalachia seeks conditioning and outlets. Gulf Coast petrochemical and LNG facilities demand feedstock. Canadian producers beg for market access. Continue reading “Yes, It Pays to Keep Customers Smiling”
This post was updated on June 24, 2019.
In 2004, EnergyPoint Research first set out to discern which oil and gas equipment suppliers and service providers work best for their customers and to quantify their experiences. A decade of collecting and analyzing the relevant data has established EnergyPoint as the resolute voice of the oilfield consumer and the only curator of independent customer satisfaction ratings in the industry.
EnergyPoint started its surveys with the assumptions that customer focus drives best practices and satisfied customers feed growth. Those facts held steady. And as we culled more industry wisdom from end users, we shared with our readers and subscribers a clearer picture of the critical variables companies can focus upon to create satisfied repeat customers. We also offered insights into how customers can influence the performance of their suppliers. Continue reading “The Customer Has Spoken: A Decade of Appraisals”
A lot of life is about expectations — when they are not met, we tend to react negatively. Business is the same way. While it might feel good to make lofty claims concerning the reliability, value or benefit of our products or services, if doing so leads to unrealistically high customer expectations, we’re doing ourselves and our customers a disfavor.
One of the questions EnergyPoint gets most often concerning its survey results is why certain oilfield suppliers perceived as having strong technology fare so modestly, or even poorly, in our annual customer satisfaction rankings of oilfield suppliers. The answer has to do with who’s setting the customers’ expectations around the technology — the company or the market place? Continue reading “A Matter Of Expectations”
In Part 1 of this article, we discussed how restaurants’ practice of constantly refilling iced tea glasses without first asking can actually leads to a diminished customer experience for some. We also hinted that we thought customers of oilfield suppliers could relate to this lesson. We want to use the second part of this article to explain how.
When an organization decides it wants to address customer satisfaction, the process it follows can have a big impact on whether its succeeds. When management does not think through and get involved in the process — opting instead for vague directives to “better serve our customers” or “create greater customer intimacy” — the results can prove ineffectual and even counterproductive. Continue reading “Thanks, But It Misses the Point – Part 2”
