# Presentation: 268016

## 2007 Web Customer Survey Results and AnalysisThis is a working document prepared by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in order to solicit advice and comment on statistical matters from the American Statistical Association Committee on Energy Statistics. This topic will be discussed at EIA's spring 2008 meeting with the Committee to be held April 9, 2008. 

- Colleen Blessing
- ASA Spring Meeting with EIA
- April 9, 2008

## Questions for the Committee

- Comments on 2007 survey questions, methodology, results, and future actions
- Suggested questions for EIA’s 2008 web customer survey

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Why Do a Customer Survey?

- Learn about our customers
- Who they are
- How often they come to our site
- What they are looking for
- How satisfied they are with EIA information
- What else they would like us to do
- Get up-to-the-minute customer responses
- Identify areas for improvement
- Collect performance measure information (one standard question we ask every year)

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Goals of 2007 Survey

- Collect “actionable” information- not just information that is nice to know
- Have a high response rate
- Don’t annoy the customer with too many questions
- Collect both customer satisfaction and market research responses

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## How the Survey Worked

- Wanted to catch users who touched specific pages on our site (home page, Level 2 pages, major products)
- After customer closed browser, the survey popped on the screen
- They could see how short the survey was
- Responses came into a database
- No cookies, so possible multiple invitations

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## 2007 Web Survey- Preliminary Work

- Goal was to at least replicate the success of the 2006 web survey - 4,800 responses in three weeks
- Discussion of questions to ask
- Decided on 8 questions for the 2007 survey

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Screen Shot of Customer Surveyhttp://tonto.eia.doe.gov/custsurvey/CustSurvey07b_final.asp

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## 2007 Web Survey Questions

- What category best describes you or your organization?
- How often do you visit EIA’s site?
- Do you live in the United States?
- Rate your satisfaction with the quality of the information on the site.  (1-10 scale)
- * What information were you looking for?  (text box)
- * Did you find the information you were looking for?
- * Which technologies do you use anywhere on the Internet (blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, videocasts)
- Anything else you want to tell us?  (text box)
- * New question in 2007

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## 2007 Web Survey Process

- Fielded the survey July 16-August 6, 2007
- Received 5,000 responses in three weeks (total site visits approx. 1 million, although not all visitors saw the survey)
- Edited out employee responses, nonsense, and profane responses before tabulation (Is the beer cold yet?)
- Not a random sample/participants
- 	are self-selecting.  Data are anecdotal
- 	but very useful.

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Web Customer Groups

- 60% energy
- 40% non-energy

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## How Often Do You Visit EIA’s Site?

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Do You Live in the U.S.?

**US: 69%**

**International: 31%**

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Satisfaction with Info Quality

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Did You Find What You Were Looking For?

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Which Technologies Do You Use?

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Anything Else You Want to Tell Us?

**Kudos** - Nearly 400 compliments.  Thank you; Keep up the good work; I wish more Government agencies were as helpful as EIA; Invaluable research tool; U guys r gr8
**Navigation** - Lots of good information but not so easy to find; It is difficult to find unless you know where to go; You have so much information that it is hard to search sometimes (14 positive comments, 54 negative comments)
**Timeliness** - Customers always want information sooner, more up-to-date; why does it take two months to get the data out?  (34 comments, mostly negative)

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Anything Else, cont.

- Data accuracy, objectivity- Some comments about neutrality, appearance of advocacy, slant, negativity of our outlook (21 comments)
- Always gloom and doom...
- Quit analyzing reasons why oil and gas prices are high... you are a data collection agency.
- I see some politics in the data.
- Please quit tweaking your data sets...
- It appears you guys WANT higher energy prices.

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Anything else, cont.

- More writing for the web
- Support for EIA funding
- Compliments to EIA staff and service
- Customer like This Week in Petroleum (TWIP)
- Over 120 suggestions

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Who is Most Satisfied?

- Most satisfied groups:
- Business/Industry (93%)
- Finance (93%)
- Media (92%)
- Relatively less satisfied groups:
- Students (78%)
- Citizens (86%)
- Satisfaction by geography:
-  United States (92%)
-  Non-US (89%)

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Who is Most Satisfied, cont.

- Satisfaction by visit frequency:
- First-time (80%)
- Repeat customers (93-95%)
- Correlation between finding what they were looking for and satisfaction with information quality:
- Easily found info  (97%)
- With effort 	(94%)
- Partly 		(80%)
- Didn’t find info 	(59%)
- So: customer satisfaction with information quality is closely connected to the availability of/successful navigation to the info they are looking for rather that any inherent goodness, accuracy, and neutrality of the data.

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Customers Were Looking for...

- Price, prices, pricing, cost 	(1,142)
- Oil, petroleum, crude 	(911)
- Inventory, storage, stocks 	(582)
- Gas, gasoline 		(487)
- Natural gas, nat. gas 	(450)
- Production, supply 	(347)
- Demand, consumption 	(334)
- Fuel 			(305)
- Country, countries, global, world, international 		(257)
- Electric, generation 	(234)
- Diesel   		(227)
- Trend  			(209)
- Forecast, Outlook 		(194)
- Market, markets  		(137)
- Coal  			(117)
- Historical, history  		(114)
- State 			 (76)
- Industry, industrial		 (75)

- Refinery, refineries  	        (63)
- Solar  			        (61)
- Renewables 		        (49)
- Imports  		        (43)
- Propane  		        (41)
- LNG   			        (40)
- Emissions  		        (31)
- Plant  			        (30)
- Nuclear  		        (28)
- Ethanol  		        (27)
- Activities, kids, students, teachers  (25)
- More...

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Future Actions

- Add easy-to-understand content to answer some basic energy questions
- Examine what people said they were looking for and what terms they used
- Use as input to EIA Web Strategy initiative
- Analyze the list of suggestions/ identify areas for improvement
- Continue to improve navigation
- Plan for next web survey in summer 2008

- U.S. Energy Information Administration

## Customer Quotes 

- Without you I cannot do my job.
- This is pretty much the bible on supply and demand for energy.
- Hey, there really is a Santa Claus, isn’t there?  Keep up the great work!

- U.S. Energy Information Administration