How DTE Energy Revamped Their Stakeholder Engagement Using Quorum

When public affairs professionals talk about relationship management, it’s often framed as both essential and elusive. You know it matters, but proving its value, scaling efforts across teams, and institutionalizing knowledge are daunting.

For DTE Energy, a Michigan-based utility serving 4 million customers, these challenges became an opportunity to build a modern, metrics-driven stakeholder strategy. At the center of their transformation: a deliberate rethinking of process and the use of Quorum Stakeholder.

In a recent webinar, Alissa Sevrioukova, Chief of Staff for Community Affairs at DTE Energy, shared how her team overhauled their stakeholder engagement model. Her story offers a practical roadmap for any public affairs team seeking to build stronger relationships and demonstrate real impact.

Why Stakeholder Engagement Needed a Refresh

As a regulated utility, DTE Energy’s mission is directly tied to the well-being of the communities it serves. Every community organization and resident is a stakeholder meaning trust is not a “nice to have”; it’s a core business imperative.

But even with decades of community engagement experience, the team faced a series of practical challenges:

• Fragmented data lived in Excel and individual inboxes.
• No clear framework existed to evaluate stakeholder sentiment.
• Geographic and demographic gaps persisted in stakeholder coverage.
• Metrics changed frequently, with no long-term continuity.

“We used a variety of forums to kind of track or keep track of [stakeholders]… Excel was definitely one, but a lot of them also lived in the digital kind of pockets of a lot of our relationship managers,” Alissa explained.

The result? Relationships were strong but unstructured. Engagement lacked scalability. And impact was difficult to measure.

The Turning Point: External Pressures Meet Internal Opportunity

Around two years ago, DTE Energy faced mounting external pressures: pandemic fallout, inflation, and the financial strain on vulnerable customers. At the same time, the company was ramping up major investments — retiring coal plants, building clean energy infrastructure, and modernizing the grid.

It became clear that passive engagement wasn’t enough. They needed a strategic, measurable way to:

• Build trust with diverse community stakeholders,
• Proactively correct misinformation,
• And cultivate a base of local advocates.

DTE Energy’s Three-Step Strategy for Stakeholder Modernization

1. Remap the Universe

The team began by cataloging their existing stakeholder base using Quorum. They assessed gaps across:

• Geography (down to counties and cities),
• Demographics and representation, and
• Centers of influence (e.g., faith leaders, HOA boards, neighborhood groups).

They didn’t just use internal knowledge. Teams across the company from government affairs to environmental compliance contributed names, contacts, and context. Where connections didn’t exist, cold outreach followed.

Now, this “universe mapping” is an annual process, reviewed quarterly. It’s never static, because neither are communities.

2. Evaluate and Segment Stakeholders

Once their universe was defined, the team segmented stakeholders using a four-part framework:

• Detractors: Opposed and vocal.
• Neutrals: Unengaged or quietly critical.
• Supporters: Aligned but passive.
• Advocates: Actively championing DTE Energy’s work.

Using Quorum, they tagged each contact by category, tracked sentiment shifts quarterly, and focused engagement efforts accordingly. Relationship managers became responsible for nudging key stakeholders “up” the curve — from neutral to supporter, from supporter to advocate.

3. Track Progress with One Source of Truth

DTE Energy migrated all stakeholder data, engagement history, and sentiment records into Quorum. This was a cultural and technical shift.

“It wasn’t until we made that connection that it really ensured that everything that needed to be tracked was being tracked,” said Alissa.

Previously underused, Quorum became central to the team’s workflow. Executive scorecards were connected directly to the platform. The new mantra? “If it’s not in Quorum, it doesn’t exist.”

From daily interactions to stakeholder surveys, Quorum became the system of record simplifying work, ensuring continuity, and giving executives visibility into impact.

From Systems to Relationships: How DTE Energy Builds Trust

While technology laid the foundation, human engagement remains the core of the strategy. Alissa emphasized the importance of:

• Listening tours to understand stakeholder priorities before pitching initiatives.
• Localized communication, e.g., “We’re trimming trees on your block,” not just “We’re investing billions.”
• Responsive action, like launching mobile customer offices based on faith leader feedback.

Follow-up is equally critical. While not every touchpoint is logged in detail, serious issues are escalated through an internal service system (called “I Can Help”) that guarantees resolution within days.

Internal Buy-In: Earning the Team’s Adoption

Getting the system in place is one challenge. Getting people to use it is another.

DTE Energy made adoption easier by:

• Focusing on benefits to the user: less admin work, fewer duplicate entries, faster reporting.
• Tying performance metrics directly to Quorum: if your work wasn’t logged, it didn’t count.
• Mandating use through leadership support and integration into scorecards.

“We pitched [Quorum] as a reduction in the administrative burden,” said Alissa. For a team previously juggling Excel files and redundant entry, this was a clear win.

They also tied performance metrics directly to system use. If activity wasn’t tracked in Quorum, it didn’t count toward stakeholder engagement goals. This dual approach — top-down accountability and bottom-up relief — helped drive widespread adoption.

Measuring What Matters

Two metrics emerged as most valuable:

1. Stakeholder Sentiment Survey: Conducted semi-annually, it asks stakeholders directly how they feel about DTE Energy’s work—from reliability to affordability. The insight: the more informed stakeholders are, the more positively they feel.
2. Segmentation Movement: Tracking how stakeholders shift along the Detractor → Advocate spectrum helps the team measure long-term impact and align daily work with strategic goals.

Takeaways for Your Team

Here are five practical lessons from this approach: