To avoid trying 10,000 ways that don’t work, your Board of Trustees meets periodically to review past accomplishments and plan, on a long-term basis, for your Cooperative’s future.  Prior to this year’s planning session, the Cooperative membership was surveyed in order to determine what areas of the operation need improvement.  Some 380 SouthEastern members took the time to complete and return the survey, which was conducted as part of a statewide survey of all Illinois electric cooperatives.

The survey revealed that 98% of SouthEastern members have a positive view of their Cooperative, with over 98% expressing overall satisfaction. 

Most of the members surveyed (55%) indicate their service from SouthEastern has stayed the same, but some 43% felt that service has improved over the past few years.

Of the 60% of the members who tried to contact the Cooperative during the past 12 months, one in ten reported they had some difficulty.  Among those who had difficulty, the most common reason was the person they were calling was not available.  Some 26% of those who had difficulty in contacting SouthEastern, said they had problems contacting the Cooperative after hours.  While that number compares favorably with a statewide percentage of 41%, it is not acceptable to us and action has been taken to improve it.

On new service installations, 91% of those surveyed rated us as good or excellent, 7% rated us fair, and 2% rated us as poor.

In regard to handling outage calls, 90% of those surveyed rated us as either good or excellent, 8% rated us as fair, and 2% of those surveyed thought we did a poor job of handling outage calls.

Our employees were ranked as courteous or very courteous by over 96% of those surveyed and 88% of those surveyed said their problem or concern with the Cooperative was handled promptly.

The survey indicates that a surprising 80% of the members read this monthly newsletter every month and another 16% read it every other month or so, but also indicates that only 42% of those surveyed think it is important to attend SouthEastern’s Annual Meeting.