Georgia Power and Southern California Gas Company deliver the best customer experience in the utilities industry, according to the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual customer experience ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers. 

This is the first year that utilities have been included in the Ratings. Overall, the utilities industry averaged a 62% rating in the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings, coming in 13th place out of 20 industries. 

Georgia Power and SoCalGas tied for the top spot out of 12 utilities in the Ratings, each scoring 74%, which put them both in 60thplace overall out of 293 companies across 20 industries. At the other end of the spectrum, Con Edison of NY was the lowest-rated utility company, with a score of 47% and a rank of 281st. 

"We're excited to start tracking customer experience in the utilities industry, which is currently at a mediocre level," states Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group. 

The ratings of all utility companies in the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings are as follows: Georgia Power (74%), Southern California Gas Company (74%), Florida Power & Light (68%), Southern California Edison (67%), Dominion Virginia Power(64%), Commonwealth Edison (63%), PSE&G (63%), DTE Energy Electric Company (63%), Pacific Gas and Electric Company(60%), Duke Energy Progress (60%), Consumers Energy Company (54%), and Consolidated Edison Company of NY (47%).

Now in its fifth year of publication, the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings is the most comprehensive benchmark of customer experience in the industry, evaluating 293 companies across 20 industries: airlines, appliance makers, auto dealers, banks, car rental agencies, computer makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, health plans, hotel chains, insurance carriers, Internet service providers, investment firms, parcel delivery services, retailers, software firms, supermarket chains, TV service providers, utilities, and wireless carriers. 

To generate these ratings, Temkin Group asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to evaluate their recent experiences with a company across three dimensions: success (can you do what you want to do?), effort (how easy is it to work with the company?), and emotion (how do you feel about the interactions?). Temkin Group then averaged these three scores to produce each company's Temkin Experience Rating.

In these ratings, a score of 70% or above is considered "good," and a score of 80% or above is considered "excellent." In this year's Temkin Experience Ratings, 37% of companies earned a "good" or "excellent" score, while 26% received a "poor" or "very poor" score. 

The 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings, along with other ratings, can be accessed at the Temkin Ratings website, www.TemkinRatings.com.