 |
Jim Riddle Exec. VP/General Manager |
How did we score with you?
Is Egyptian Electric Cooperative meeting your expectations? This is a question your board of directors, and my staff and I take seriously. I would love to be able to sit and ask each one of you that question, but as you can imagine, that would be nearly impossible. That doesn’t make the question any less relevant, it just means we have to look to other methods to find the answer.
To assist us in finding the information we need, the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives (AIEC) conducts a survey of members throughout Illinois every two years. Partnering with our other Illinois electric cooperatives allows us to garner the information we need at a much lower cost than if we were to commission a survey on our own. It also allows us to compare our performance against other cooperatives and regions. Some of you may recall having received the survey through the mail last fall and we thank those that took the time to complete the survey and mail it back. Some of the information we received surprises me, some pleases me and some indicates areas we need to improve.
Energy Use Information
Over 20 percent of our members use heat pump technology (air source or geothermal) to heat and cool their homes. Another 32 percent use straight electric heat (furnace, baseboard or ceiling cable) to heat their homes. Throughout the Illinois electric cooperatives, only 10 percent use heat pump technology to heat their homes with another 10 percent using straight electric heat. In addition, nearly 80 percent of our members have an electric water heater compared to less than 49 percent for the other Illinois electric cooperatives.
Using electricity for the largest two energy consumers in the home (space conditioning and water heating) indicates our member’s have put a lot of faith in us to provide them with quality service and fairly priced electricity. This means we must have the generation capacity and maintain the electric distribution system to meet your energy needs while using the most efficient and effective methods we can. A formidable task, but one that we readily accept and strive to meet daily.
Contact with Cooperative
Over 68 percent of our members attempted to contact the Cooperative over the last 12 months compared to 61 percent for all of the Illinois cooperatives. The survey did not ask the reason for the contact so I don’t know what is driving the additional contacts, but I do know that 98.4 percent indicated our employees were courteous compared to 96.4 percent for the statewide group. We are very proud of our Member Service Representatives (MSR) that take your calls and attempt to answer your questions.
I am somewhat concerned that 13 percent of those that attempted to make contact with us indicated they had difficulty contacting someone. I do want to assure all of our members that we answer all calls during business hours with our MSRs. WE DO NOT USE AN AUTOMATED PHONE SYSTEM! Our phone system has the capabilities of being used as an auto-attendant, but we understand that you prefer a real person, so we answer all calls live unless all of the MSRs are on the phone with other members. In fact, a couple of years ago a phone usage survey by the telephone company indicated we were having a high number of busy calls by members attempting to contact the Murphysboro office. To eliminate this, we put both offices into a call group that presents each call to the next available MSR at either office. Some of you may have been surprised that someone in Steeleville answered your call when you dialed the Murphysboro phone number or vice versa. This allowed us to spread the phone calls more equitably between the MSR’s and hopefully eliminate some of the busy calls while not increasing personnel.
It does appear from answers to the type of difficulty you received, that most of the trouble was with our after-hours phone service. We do use an answering service owned by an electric cooperative that developed the answering service just for electric cooperatives. They provide this service to a number of electric cooperatives in the Midwest. Last year they answered 80 percent of the 2 million calls they took with live operators. They do use an automated system during periods of high volume and I suspect the 26 members indicating a problem may have experienced problems during the May 8 storm. I can assure you though I will be following up with our service provider on this matter.
Member Satisfaction
This is a subject I take very seriously. This is your electric cooperative and as far as I’m concerned, member satisfaction is not a goal, it’s a MUST.
There are several questions within the survey that attempt to measure member satisfaction in different ways. This ensures we get a true picture of your satisfaction with the job we are doing. One of the first is just an outright question as to how satisfied you are. 96.7 percent indicated they had a positive - very positive feeling about Egyptian Electric. This compares to 94.3 percent for the Illinois electric cooperatives as a whole.
Secondly, we asked how satisfied you were with our response to the May 8 storm. Nearly 90 percent indicated you were satisfied - very satisfied with the job we did. As we were the only cooperative asking this question, I can’t compare it to any of the other cooperatives. I am somewhat disappointed by the 10 percent that indicated they were not satisfied, but considering how long many of you were without power, I can understand your reaction.
The final measure of your satisfaction and one we examine closely is a serious of four questions designed by the University of Michigan Business School. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is one of the most recognized customer satisfaction indices in the United States. Based on your response to the four standardized questions, an ACSI score that can be compared across industries is derived. Nationally, the average ACSI score for Touchstone Energy Cooperatives is 82, while the electric industry as a whole is 74. Your cooperative, Egyptian Electric, scored an 83, slightly higher than the average of all Touchstone Energy Cooperatives. Considering the increase in rates we experienced last year and the devastating storm in May, this is a number I anticipated. I would have liked it to be higher, but sometimes you have to accept reality.
Surveys are a great tool to find out the general feelings of our members and to compare our performance with others. Member meetings however allow us the opportunity to examine in more detail particular concerns you may have. By the time this is published, the first member meeting will have been held in Sparta. The second one, which I urge you to attend, will be at 6:30 P.M., March 16, at the Murdale Baptist Church on the west side of Carbondale.
I wanted to hold these meetings so that I have the opportunity to meet many of you and to hear your concerns and desires for your electric cooperative. It is an informal meeting and I urge you to ask questions that are on your mind. We’ll answer those that we can honestly and openly, those we don’t know the answer to, I promise we’ll get the answer and get back to you. Most importantly, it allows us to examine where we may not be meeting your expectations. Only then can we address the shortfall and improve our service to you.
