Perceived quality

The Customer listening Unit of the Parent Company coordinates the process of measuring customer and citizen satisfaction with the services provided in the electrical, water46 and public lighting sectors. The Unit works in agreement with the operating compa- nies that manage the services and supports top management with analysis of the data collected.

Customer satisfaction surveys (“perceived quality”) are carried out twice a year by an institute specialising in demographic research, selected by tender.

In 2021, with a view to the constant improvement of measurements, a new continuous survey method has been designed, especially for the satisfaction surveys of customers who contacted Acea through the various channels available.

The 2021 half-yearly surveys, in line with previous years, were con- ducted using CATI methodology47, but CAWI (online surveys) was also added to this survey method. Since the new method has not yet been applied uniformly to the various Group companies and in- troduces a discontinuity in the interpretation of results, in order to maintain a comparison, presented here are only the data collected using the CATI method, which have enabled the following main indicators to be processed:

the overall judgement on the general quality of the service (scale of 1 to 10), where 1 means very bad and 10 means very good, which expresses an instinctive evaluation by customers;
overall opinions on individual aspects of the service (scale of 1-10);
the percentages of satisfaction with the items, or quality fac- tors, selected within each aspect of the service, according to the importance attached to them by the respondents.

The synthetic CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) indicators pre- sented in previous editions of the Sustainability Report are therefore being replaced by overall opinions on services and their individual aspects, as these are more stable indicators than the CSI48. To en- sure comparability with the previous year, the results of the 2020 surveys were expressed using the same indicators as those used in 2021.

Interviews on "contact channels" are aimed at selected customers, using the "call back" method, from among those who have used the services (toll-free numbers for commercial information or fault reporting, website, branch, technical intervention, chat channels and digital service points) immediately before the first entry and con- sented to be contacted again.

Concerning the physical branch, unlike what happened in some cases, in 2020 following the closures imposed by the health emer- gency for the first semester, in 2021 it was possible to conduct the interviews in both the first and second semester.

In the two customer satisfaction survey sessions carried out in 2021, a total of 35,283 people were interviewed about the qual- ity of the services provided by Acea Energia, Areti - both for the distribution and public lighting service -, Acea Ato 2 (Rome and Fiumicino and province), Acea Ato 5, GORI, Gesesa and AdF. The overall opinions expressed on each service, as an average of the two six-monthly surveys, fall within the area of average satisfaction and between 6.3 and 7.9 (see the charts below and the tables at the end of this paragraph).

The overall opinions expressed on the electricity service and the main aspects into which it is divided indicate, for Acea Energia sales, positive evaluations and above average satisfaction (rating > 7/10) both for the service in general (7.9/10 for standard market custom- ers and 7.6/10 for free market customers) and for the aspects of "billing" and "online branch", the latter surveyed among free market customers, while the aspects of "toll-free number" and "branch" are in the area of complete satisfaction (ratings of 8-10) for both standard and free market customers. For distribution, managed by Areti, the overall rating is 7.8/10 and the aspects of the service, with the exception of "fault reporting" which, with 6.9/10, is in the aver- age satisfaction range (ratings of 6-7), receive overall opinions above 7/10 and in particular the "technical aspects of the service" (7.9/10) and "technical intervention" (7.7/10) are close to the complete satis- faction area. Residents of Rome were interviewed about the Public Lighting service for all areas. The overall opinions on the service and its aspects are confirmed to be of average satisfaction (rating of 6-7), with 'fault reporting' receiving higher ratings of 7.5/10.

As regards the water service (sale and distribution of water), the satisfaction of customers of Acea Ato 2 (Rome and Fiumicino and province) and Acea Ato 5 (Frosinone and province), in the Lazio area, customers of GORI and Gesesa, operating in Campania, and customers of AdF, operating in Tuscany, was measured. The overall opinion on the service provided by Acea Ato 2 in Rome and Fiumici- no is 7.9/10; the "billing" and "technical aspects” of the service re- ceive overall ratings above the satisfaction average (> 7/10) and "fault reporting", "technical intervention", "sales toll-free number" and "branch" are in the area of complete satisfaction (ratings of 8-10). For Acea Ato 5, which operates in the city and province of Frosi- none, the overall rating of the service is 6.3/10; the overall opinions on "billing" and "technical aspects" are on the average level of satisfaction, while all other aspects receive overall ratings of over 7/10 and close to complete satisfaction. For GORI, which manages the service in the Sorrento peninsula and Vesuvian centres between the provinces of Naples and Salerno, the overall opinion is also 6.6/10; the "billing" aspect, with an overall opinion of 6.6/10, is in the area of average satisfaction, "fault reporting" (7.7/10) and "commercial toll-free number" (7.8/10) are close to complete satisfaction and the other aspects of the service have overall opinions of 8/10 or high- er. With regard to AdF which operates in Tuscany, in the provinces of Grosseto and Siena, the overall opinion on the service is 7.5/10; the overall rating of the service aspects are over 7/10 for "billing" and "technical aspects" and over 8/10, i.e. in the area of complete satis- faction, for all other areas. Finally, for Gesesa, which operates in the city and province of Benevento, the overall opinion for the service is 6.9/10; the 'technical aspects of the service' receive an overall opin- ion of 7.2/10, higher than the average satisfaction rating, and billing 6.9/10.

The charts below show, for each service, the 2021 overall opinion (scale of 1-10), as the average of the two surveys for the year, and Tables 16 and 17 also show the percentages of satisfied customers insofar as the most important quality factors for the electricity sales and distribution services, the public lighting service and the water service, and the comparison with the previous year, with indication of the most significant deviations.