SECTION 1.  Subsection (a) of section 1E of chapter 164 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2016 Official Edition, is hereby amended by striking the last sentence of said section in its entirety and inserting in place thereof the following:-

In promulgating such performance based rate schemes, the department shall establish service quality standards for each distribution, transmission and gas company for all customer classes.  Such standards shall include, but not be limited to, standards for customer satisfaction, service outages, distribution facility upgrades, repairs and maintenance, new connections to customers, relocations of existing connections, telephone service, billing service, and public safety, provided, however, that such service quality standards shall include benchmarks for employee staff levels and employee training programs for each such distribution, transmission, and gas company.

SECTION 2.  Subsection (7) of Section 1F of Chapter 164 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2016 Official Edition, is hereby amended by inserting after the words “service outages” in lines 245-246 the following words:-

“new connections to customers, relocations of existing customers,”