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Partnerships for Success
- 1. Partnerships for Success Kristen Bousquet, Arbor Day Foundation Betsy Castro, Duke Energy Florida Carly West, Black Hills Energy Jodine Grundy, Taking Root
- 2. success noun The accomplishment of an aim or purpose
- 3. Betsy Castro Manager Distribution Vegetation Management Duke Energy Florida • Clearwater, FL Betsy.castro@duke-energy.com
- 6. • Website, Tree Distribution & Educational Materials • Live Dashboard • Call Center Support • Network Collaboration Partnerships for Success • Corporate Communications • Marketing • Vegetation Management • Executive Leadership • Avail to all DEF customers • Targeted Communication through Email • Eligibility Check by Account Number • Satisfaction Survey Arbor Day Foundation Internal Collaboration Duke Energy Customers
- 8. • Customer response rate • Communication analytics • Environmental impact • Satisfaction survey results “Hurricane Michael killed 80% of the trees in our area. The coastal forest has been destroyed. Anything I can do to help restore the beautiful canopy is my duty. Unfortunately, I am financially restricted. I will plant free trees as long as you send them. My crape myrtle is planted where you recommended and doing well. Thank you for caring. Success Metrics
- 9. Over the 3 years of the program, 531 customers responded to a satisfaction survey: 469 were satisfied (Score of 9-10) 29 were neutral (Score of 7-8) 33 were not satisfied (Score of 0-6) Customer Satisfaction
- 10. • Environmental Benefits • Strategic Tree Placement • Community Engagement • Customer Connection • Aids Tree Line USA membership Highlights: • Customers able to select tree species and placement guidance • Ease of partnership with Arbor Day Foundation • Customer satisfaction Challenges: • Consistent funding • Tree selection Predicting customers’ preference Variety of species appropriate for all Florida zones Provide “Power Line Friendly” trees • Communications ready for January launch Benefits to the Community and Utility
- 12. Carly West Manager, Community Affairs Black Hills Energy • Denver, CO Carly.west@blackhillscorp.com South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Arkansas
- 13. • We serve over 1.27 million electric and natural gas utility customers in 823 communities in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. • Natural gas utility serving six states • Electric utility serving three states Black Hills Energy
- 15. Marketing • Media Releases • Social Media • Chamber of Commerce
- 16. • Demonstration • What to expect • Safety message Facebook Live
- 17. Program Tools
- 18. Community Support – Pilger Tornado • June 16, 2014 twin tornados devasted Pilger, NE • Destroyed 60 homes, two dozen commercial buildings and a church • Gas service shut off to 150 customers for safety
- 19. Community Support – Pilger Tornado
- 20. Lessons Learned & Takeaways • Pros and cons of great media coverage • Social media monitoring • Impact sheet
- 21. Impact Sheet
- 22. Looking to the Future • Options to raise impact • Growing the program • Continuing a great partnership Thank you to the Arbor Day Foundation!
- 23. Jodine Grundy Board Member and Officer Taking Root • Cincinnati, OH grundyj@fuse.net
- 25. April 2019 distribution, Northern Kentucky projects in Newport and Covington KY.
Editor's Notes
- Vegetation managers are on the front lines of customer service, interacting often with customers and communities, but it’s not your only job. While tree distribution and planting programs can improve the image and performance of a utility, delivering those programs successfully may depend on internal and external partners – experts in marketing, funding, or event management. Find out how to engage these partners to help you implement a successful program – ad make your life easier!
- Maybe new road image
- ADF: Tree reservation website customized for Duke Energy 1-gallon trees mailed to customers Homeowner education-RTRP Call center support Google map with placement guidance Dashboard for reports Arbor Day network for collaboration Florida Forest Service has partnered with Duke/Foundation - State-wide media release - Targeted communications occurred for specific counties - 50,000 customers received emails - Facebook posts created based on zip code designations Communications sent in January for Tree Delivery in April by Arbor Day Duke targeted 2,500 trees a year in 2019 When sold out, there is a wait list option
- Trees help clean the air & water Planting in the right place can effectively shade homes, saving money on electric bills Increase property values
- A little info about us: BHE is a natural gas and electric utility serving eight states: Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Montana. Really diverse territory. Nature of our company has been rural, but we’ve seen some of the communities we serve expand and become much more dense. For example, suburbs of Denver and Colorado springs. Areas of not just the fastest growth in the company’s footprint, but some of the fastest growing areas in the state and country. Areas we serve vary in a lot of ways. For example: Colorado has ambitious environmental goals and renewable energy standards, and our electric generation has no coal – only wind, solar and natural gas generation. Wyoming we operate a mine to mouth coal mining and electric generation operation, and the state recently passed legislation to keep coal in business in the state – utilities seeking to decommission plants in Wyoming would be forced to search for buyers before they are allowed to shut the plants down. If other companies purchase the plants, then utilities are compelled to buy back power from the plants. How we market the program in these states varies a little.
- Before my time, company had had a trees program that they administered themselves. Took a lot of manpower and they were looking at discontinuing it entirely because it was just too heavy on the logistics to make work. A predecessor found out about the Energy Saving Trees program, and it has been a really great fit for us to continue to provide this benefit to our customers but in a much more efficient streamlined way. Even as our program administrator for the company, it is really not a big lift, and the benefit far outweighs the output, which wasn’t always the case. We set separate budgets for the program each year. Most of those are by state, with some exceptions – in Colorado, we run separate programs for our electric and gas utilities, as the areas that those overlap and we provide both services are very limited. In Nebraska, we serve only gas, but we run two programs – one for customers in our dense metro areas of Lincoln and Omaha, and another for the rest of our customers who are spread out across another 250+ towns throughout the state. We then work with the Arbor Day Foundation to determine how many trees those budgets will provide to each program, and they source trees that will be a good fit for the climates that we serv e.
- We do a variety of things to market the program leading up to the launch and while it is active. Media releases – some tv, some print – I put together a template for all states to personalize use, and we send it out based on the timing in our media markets Social media: boosted posted posts, some to promote the program before it launches, and then to spread the word that it is open Outside the box – chamber newsletters
- Another marketing tool that we have used is a Facebook live post. We wanted to show how easy it is, to help customer’s know what to expect (which was not a 10 foot tall tree), and build more excitement. We got a tree early and found a couple of employees to participate – one of them got the free tree for their home in exchange for participating. They did a video of digging the hole, planting the tree, and talked about how to do it, and especially highlighted the importance of calling 811 in advance of planting the tree. The safety message around calling before you dig is a huge piece of the communications we put out around the program. 811 is part of every communication piece we put out on the program. It’s also another thing that makes this a great fit for our company. We have a goal of being the safest company in the industry, and the ability to pair this great environmental program and customer benefit with that key focus of being safe, it makes is a really great fit for us.
- EST provides great tools for program: dashboard great for monitoring in real time, making adjustments. Great when you see when an article hits the paper or a story gets covered on the news and all of a sudden a programs trees start flying off the shelf. We use in to track the program in real time and make adjustments as necessary. I mentioned Nebraska and their two programs, essentially urban and rural, to ensure fair distribution. That said, keeping a close eye on the dashboard, if participation wanes in one area, able to transfer trees to where there is still demand to get them to interested customers. Checking in with team daily when program launches. Goal to have all trees claimed in one week. Every year is different. In 2017 in Wyoming the local news did a segment on the program, 250 trees were claimed in 24 hours. Last year, we just didn’t get picked up due to other things happening in the news cycle, and struggled to get the trees claimed – had to do a lot more social media, outreach to chambers, etc. to get the message out. Watching through the dashboard helps make adjustments in real time.
- in June of 2014, small community of Pilger, Nebraska experienced a devastating tornado. Three-quarters of the town was heavily damaged or destroyed. As we addressed the immediate issues of ensuring safety of our system and restoring service to our customers, we started thinking about how we could make a difference in helping the town rebuild.
- We looked to our partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation to help us do that. Black Hills Energy again partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation and donated 50 trees to help the town recover. Town of about 350 residents. 5-6 foot trees to speed recovery/impact. Customers in the town were able to claim trees through the EST portal that was set up just for this donation. We asked for volunteers to help us plant, and our employees partnered with local volunteers to get trees planted in almost 50 locations in Pilger. Additionally, if you are interested in learning more about it, or tearing up at your desk, the Arbor Day Foundation also worked with us to create a video about the project and the community donation.
- Lessons learned: great media coverage can create a backlash to quick sellouts (really emphasize a limited number of trees), waitlist limited trees – changed to an email letting customers know when a program was coming Social media great for monitoring customer responses in real time. Survey great information for us following. The impact sheet – great information that we use in our annual report and corporate responsibility report. Especially great to see single year impact, and impact since we started participating in program in 2014 (?)
- The impact sheet – great information that we use in our annual report and corporate responsibility report. Especially great to see single year impact, and impact since we started participating in program in 2014
- Looking to the future: in states like Colorado where customers are so spread out, discussing the possibility of focusing on a specific community each year, doing a collaborative Arbor Day event locally, rather than trees distributed throughout the state. Looking to find more resources – great program, great response, worthwhile to expand Continuing a great partnership