“Just as ripple spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.” –Dalai Lama

Upon continued reflections of our performance, I am confident we have made progress toward the organization we want to become – safe, quality, professional, proud, being the contractor of choice for our employees and customers. For example, in the spring outage season, 98.8% of our jobs were completed without a significant safety or quality event (up from 97.2% last year). This advancement has been very intentional for all of us, starting with the Fleet Strategy, Safety Keystone, and Critical X mentality we deployed last summer. Thank you for this advancement towards excellence.

These results have led to several good accolades shared from key customers such as Florida Power & Light and Bruce Power. A couple of recent quotes: “I can say that your program and personnel were recognized as an industry leader in EHS” … “This past outage has gained a lot of respect from our safety department regarding [your] ability to work safe.”

However, I have also spoken directly with some key customers, including Entergy and Southern Company, that did not receive the APM experience we promise to deliver. Those experiences on four jobs led to questions about how APM as a whole prepares for outages, develops its employees, and communicates a professional culture. The entire APM brand was put in question – “poor quality supervision and substandard craft labor”. This is unacceptable. Speaking with these customers, we understand why this experience was poor, and we have put in place the appropriate corrective and preventive actions to deliver a better experience. Now we must execute those actions with excellence.

Every customer experience with us has a ripple effect. In many cases, the effect is positive, and our customers praise our culture, helping us to spread the word about APM. Conversely, the negative customer experiences are very difficult to overcome. They reflect poorly against our APM standard for excellence, and the repercussions of these experiences, no matter the job or line of business, affect all of us throughout APM.

Some quick stats on customer experience to consider:

• When customers are unhappy, there's a 91 percent chance they won't do business with a company again (Lee Resources).

• Dissatisfied customers typically tell nine to 15 other people about their experience; some tell 20 or more (White House Office of Consumer Affairs).

• A negative customer experience is the reason 86 percent of consumers quit doing business with a company (Customer Experience Impact Report).

• Good customer experiences lead 42 percent of consumers to purchase again (Zendesk Customer Service Study).

Every customer experience has the potential for significant impact on our business.

So how can you help APM deliver an excellent experience for our customers and employees?

1. Do your job with excellence.

2. Recognize your impact on the larger APM team’s reputation for excellence.

3. Be a coach to someone who is struggling to embrace the excellence journey.

We need consistency, maturity, and resiliency in executing our strategy for achieving excellence. This will deliver the optimal experience, both for our customers and our employees, that we all aspire to achieve.

—Jake