News > CEO’s Message – August 2024

CEO’s Message – August 2024

2024 Member Satisfaction Survey

In last month’s column, I covered the Cooperative’s strategic planning process, which takes place approximately every three years. For this month’s column, I want to share more about our member satisfaction survey. Our mission is to safely provide competitively priced and reliable electric service, beneficial energy solutions and a positive member experience. Conducting member surveys is one of the ways we can measure our member experience and satisfaction levels, which help us determine if we are successfully meeting our mission. 

Stearns Electric conducts member surveys every year, which includes a larger survey every three years. 

This past April, Stearns Electric Association completed a Residential Member Satisfaction Survey in partnership with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). Over 400 Stearns Electric member-consumers completed the survey. Members were selected at random from throughout the Cooperative’s service territory to ensure accurate representation of our membership. The survey was conducted completely online this year. 

Our Stearns Electric team was pleased with the results, which showed a mean overall member satisfaction rating of 8.73 on a 10-point scale. Overall, 85% of respondents were satisfied with the Cooperative, including 46% of members who indicated they were very satisfied, which was the highest rating. 

Since the last time this larger survey was conducted in 2021, overall member satisfaction slightly increased from 84% to 85% in 2024. To the Board and the Cooperative’s management team, this shows consistency year-over-year. 

Beyond member satisfaction, the survey allowed members to share their views on items regarding energy management, communication preferences, outage updates and restoration efforts, existing programs, and possible future programs. A couple of areas that were identified as potential areas of focus in the future include implementing new rate structures, such as a time-of-use rate, and enhancing outage notifications for members. 

Additionally, two areas received significantly higher marks in 2024 than in 2021: 

• Keeping blinks and momentary outages to a minimum 
• Keeping members informed on the status of outages 

The results of the survey have been evaluated carefully by both Stearns Electric employees and Board members and were used to help drive the conversation in our strategic planning session. 

Overall, the Cooperative is very pleased with the Member Satisfaction Survey results and will continue to work to maintain this high level of satisfaction among our member-consumers. 

I want to extend a thank you to all members who took the time to participate in this year’s Member Satisfaction Survey. We appreciate your time and your feedback. 

Sincerely,

Matt O’Shea
Chief Executive Officer