Summary
Since 2010, CEO has provided electric power to Colombia’s Valle del Cauca. Amidst local uneasiness towards private companies, CEO’s 2022 communication goals focused on improving brand perception. To address this challenge, GlobalNews provided a holistic measurement program, including content media analysis from 2019 to 2023, introducing a scoring system, and adopting a “customer-centric” approach.

CEO saw a 5% increase in digital channels without official social media platforms by 2022. However, a decrease of 27% in positive online mentions indicated a disconnection between the company’s messaging and public perception, leading to the development of a survey on local media consumption habits.

Objective/Brief
CEO (Compañía Energética de Occidente or Western Energy Company) has distributed electric power in Valle del Cauca in southwest Colombia since 2010. The region has a 62% rural population, a prolonged history of armed conflict and a public opinion with scepticism about private companies.

CEO has not been immune to this perception of mistrust, going as far as having its technical staff illegally detained by local communities as a way to air their grievances, threatening the safety of the workers and the company’s operations.

CEO’s communication strategy aims to enhance the brand’s perception in these communities, leveraging communicative efforts to emphasise the company’s contribution to the region’s well-being.

Their key challenges include engaging with local media and establishing a measurement system to gauge the reach of their key messages to have an impact in the mindset of their customers.

For their 2022 communication goals, CEO intended to:

• Boost the number of positive stories about CEO in local media by 15%, decreasing negative mentions by 10% for 2022.
• Enhance their employer attraction in 2022 by 5% over the previous year through the “work with us” button on their website.
• Raise non-face-to-face attention by 5%, diversifying customer service channels compared to 2021.

Strategy
The region of Cauca, where CEO operates, faces multifaceted challenges due to armed conflicts, illegal energy connections, and roadblocks by indigenous communities. The recent political shift in Colombia under their first left-leaning president, Gustavo Petro, in particular his views on the mining and energy sectors, has added to the prevailing uncertainty.

Initially, GlobalNews trained the client in AMEC’s best practices, beginning with a diagnostic of their communications measurement through the M3 questionnaire. This training was further guided by the Integrated Evaluation Framework, allowing the client to clearly visualise their objectives and align them appropriately with the communications team. This alignment is vital for identifying metrics tailored to their needs and desired evaluation fields and understanding strengths and opportunities for improvement.

It became evident that there was a need to get closer to the audience and improve the delivery and reception of key messages. The strategy emphasised strengthening local and social media to increase engagement with the target audience. This approach sought to bolster CEO’s image as an ally of both the residents and the environment, emphasising their dedication to sustainability, management, and commitment to employment in the region.

In response to CEO’s uncertainty about suitable benchmarking contenders, GlobalNews advised them to evaluate the communicational performance of other electric energy providers nationwide, or alternatively, other public service providers within their region of influence.

This assessment aims to verify outputs, outtakes, and outcomes through interaction with the respective audiences.

Execution/Implementation
GlobalNews Group made an initial retrospective analysis of earned and social media from 2019 to 2021. Gaining an understanding of communication efforts from competitors, focusing on key pillars like electric energy distribution and commercialisation, inclusive non-banking financing ventures, strategic social investment, talent management, and supply chain.

The client had recognised the importance of assessing its reputation, aiming for its company objectives by 2024, and listening to stakeholder groups to improve perception and reputation.

A pivotal change in the measurement strategy was the introduction of integrated scoring for traditional and social media. Scores were determined based on criteria aligned with their communication objectives, weighing the origin of the media sources and the prominence and sentiment in each mention.

Findings prompted actions under a “customer-centric” approach, a collaborative strategy involving various departments to enhance customer experience. Based on the main issues arising from social listening, this included establishing feedback loops and training programmes on how to manage crisis situations from customer service.

CEO’s social media exposure was actively monitored, focusing on followers, engagement, and potential reach. An accompanying web analysis entailed daily mention tracking, sentiment analysis, and influencer identification to gauge company presence and interest.

Social media monitoring prioritised tracking pertinent topics and pillars, emphasising community pages on Twitter and Facebook, Colombia’s two most popular networks.

GlobalNews advised CEO to participate in the customer satisfaction survey conducted by the Regional Energy Integration Commission(CIER), utilising NPS to assess the effectiveness of their strategies.

The 2021 survey solicited responses to gauge service perception levels and their potential influence on brand preference or advocacy. Secondary sources, such as rankings developed by CIER’s ISCAL rating (Index of Satisfaction with Perceived Quality), were incorporated as reputable benchmarks in Latin America. These assessed customer satisfaction levels with the service their respective energy distributors offered, examining various service attributes.

Effectiveness of Assignment
Improving the positioning of CEO in traditional media played a crucial role. Some of the outputs analysed according to the established scoring system were:

Following the recommendations, there was an increase of 36.5% in positive appearances in influential regions for 2022.
A reduction of 49.1% in stories about service interruptions.
A rise of 8.7% in 2022 in exclusive articles about key messages.

The comms team identified significant challenges in spreading the company’s message. Relationship activities on the ground allowed the creation of a handbook of local media outlets that convey the company’s target audience, making contact with 68 media outlets in 23 cities influenced by CEO.

Without having official accounts on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, tracking third-party mentions in social media was essential in determining the improvement of user opinions regarding the company’s goal to increase the use of virtual channels for customer service. Promoting virtual channels contributed to a 5% increase in the use of virtual customer service channels (social networks, video calls, or chatbots on the company’s website). Despite this improvement, it was also found that positive posts decreased by 27% compared to 2021. This adverse result led to the decision to create official CEO social networks for 2023 to better address the discussion about the brand in digital environments.

The increased use of virtual customer service channels, coupled with improvements in the response times of technical teams, allowed the company to achieve 11th place in the ISCAL rating (Satisfaction Index with Perceived Quality) in the annual survey conducted by CIER. This non-profit organisation joins energy sector companies in Latin America.

The scoring system showed an increase in negative mentions on social media indicating a gap between users’ reception and the company’s communication objectives. With this in mind, CEO decided to survey with the support of GlobalNews, to better determine preferences in information consumption and campaign recall among its users to find valuable information to improve community favorability. The need for a survey that could statistically know the consumption habits of the main stakeholders is part of the learning achieved by CEO.

Marisol Gómez, Director of Sustainability and Communication at CEO, sees GlobalNews as a strategic ally that helps to optimise its financing resources, understand its actions and its contribution to its KPIs:

“We highly appreciate GlobalNews for their contribution to our mission to provide energy to local communities and achieving and showing good results from our team”.

Globalsnews Supporting Document