Since its incorporation in 1938, SouthEastern has held its Annual Meeting at a number of locations including the Saline County Fairground and in a large canvas tent erected adjacent to the Cooperative's Eldorado Headquarters.  Meeting accommodations were significantly improved when the decision was made to relocate the meeting to the Campus of the Southeastern Illinois Junior College in 1976.

Few areas of Southern Illinois are more scenic than the SIC Campus and the hospitality of Drs. Oldham and Cummiskey and their respective staff has just been tremendous over the years.  There is no question that they have worked diligently to make each SouthEastern Annual Meeting held there a success.

However despite the numerous advantages of the SIC Campus over previous locations, there have been a few issues our members have complained about over the years, including the difficulty of access for senior and handicapped individuals, the bleacher type seating and the acoustic quality of the gymnasium.

To address those issues your Board of Trustees has been discussing the pros and cons of various other sites in the SouthEastern service area that might alleviate the above mentioned member complaints.  Recently a Committee of the Board visited one of the more favorable potential locations and found it to have several advantages and opportunities for the membership, including improved access, acoustics, comfort and location.

The facility has a covered entranceway which will be a significant advantage in inclement weather conditions.  It also has a large foyer (with restrooms) immediately adjacent to the meeting area which will allow members to enter the building, register and walk just a few feet into a spacious auditorium with 1,500 padded floor mounted chairs.  It offers superior acoustics and in addition has two large video screens which can be used to project graphs, reports and other data.

The facility is located approximately 3 miles north of Harrisburg, Illinois adjacent to and on the west side of State Route 34 and is commonly known as the "Little Chapel Church" although the structure encompasses approximately two acres.

In my vision of a perfect cooperative each phone call would be answered by a live (and courteous) person on the first ring, 24 hours per day, seven days a week, 365 days per year, with nary a busy signal.  However since our normal daily call load at SouthEastern  is in the range of 250 calls per day, a number which can soar into the thousands during major power supply failures, it would mean that hundreds of additional employees would have to be available at all times to provide perfect phone service.  Obviously, that is not a viable situation, so we use automation to assist us in serving you better.

Typically we have 3-5 individuals on a daily basis answering calls live Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. through 4:00 p.m.  During heavy call periods members calling the Cooperative will hear a recording asking them to hold for the next available Customer Service Representative and the recording will also advise the caller as to how many other callers are waiting to talk to a CSR.  Every 90 seconds or so the caller will be given the choice of continuing to hold or leaving a message.  All messages are retrieved as soon as possible, even if it means our employees have to work after hours to do so.

Callers who contact the Cooperative outside of regular working hours to report outages or other emergency situations will typically have those calls answered by an Interactive Voice Response system, which identifies the caller's location by matching it to the member's phone number in our data base.  The system has the capability of allowing the caller to leave a message which will be retrieved by an operator.  For the system to work properly, it is very important that members enter their permanent phone number in the space provided on their billing ticket.  Please help us serve you better by taking the time to fill in this blank.

See you next year at the new Annual Meeting location and as always, "We'll keep the lights on for you"!