I ordered several bags full of food from a popular chicken restaurant not long ago. When I arrived at the window, I realized I didn’t have any money. I had forgotten my wallet at home. I looked up at the cashier and embarrassingly explained the situation. He said it was no problem and handed me my family’s dinner; said that I could take care of the bill next time. When I arrived at the restaurant, I expected them to be polite and take my order with a smile. I did not, however, expect them to trust me to return to pay for $50 worth of food — that far exceeded my expectations.

Meeting expectations is tough, and exceeding expectations is even tougher, but that’s our goal at Jackson EMC. And we aim to do that through reliable, courteous and personalized service.

I can get a chicken sandwich and fries anywhere. But based on the service I received, I know which place I’ll put at the top of my list. (Here’s a hint – they serve a great chicken filet sandwich!) My hope is, when it comes to electricity you’d put the service you receive from Jackson EMC at the top of your list, too.

You expect to have electricity flowing to your homes and businesses every minute of every day. And you should. That’s why we’re here. Our goal is to keep the lights on for all of our members all of the time. To exceed that expectation, when Mother Nature wreaks havoc on our distribution system, weighing down the lines with ice, laying down trees and snapping poles, we need to get the power restored faster than we did during the last storm. To get better with each new challenge, we learn; we clear the right-of-way; we install equipment that helps us identify the source of the outage faster; and we plan for threats, putting people in place to respond when needed.

We want to do more than keep the lights on. We want to provide outstanding customer service to our members. To us, that means you get answers the first time you visit, call, email or message us. We call it one contact resolution and we have a team of people dedicated to improving your experience.

Many of you share your stories with me and let me how we’re doing in exceeding your expectations. Last month, I heard from my friend Dwight Puckett in Suwanee, who was having a small roof repair. In the process, the repairman noticed an electrical issue that needed attention, so he gave us a call to have the power shut off. I learned instead of shutting it off remotely, we sent a couple of guys out there to take a look and we made the electrical repair ourselves. I also heard from Rick Wright, whose experience with our contact center was so great he decided to send me a personal email with the subject line “applaud.”

I really do enjoy hearing these stories. I need to hear more of them, the good and the bad.

I’m asking to hear from a lot more of you because for us, the first step in exceeding expectations is to know what they are. When you’re in our district offices, or on the phone with our contact center, or reaching out to us through our social networking sites – tell us what you expect. Or, send me an email to [email protected].