The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) announced its 2018 Energy Utilities Industry results and Southern Indiana Power, a Touchstone Energy cooperative, remains atop the energy sector for the eighth year in a row (from 2011 to 2018).

With a score of 83, resulting from the ACSI’s annual comparison comprised of the last four quarters of scoring, Southern Indiana Power remains 8 points greater than investor-owned utilities as well as municipal utilities.

The ACSI is the nation’s only cross-industry measure of customer satisfaction and has more than two decades of experience analyzing customer satisfaction with investor-owned energy utilities serving U.S. residential consumers as well as eight years of consumer evaluations of municipal and cooperative energy utilities. Consumer satisfaction benchmarks across the three categories – investor owned, municipal and cooperative – are updated annually based on interviews with hundreds of residential consumers about recent experiences with their electric provider.

ACSI scores are calculated by member-consumers’ responses of three questions: overall satisfaction of member service, ability to meet member expectations, and evaluation of experience in comparison to an ideal energy provider. The ACSI then uses its proprietary algorithm to calculate an outcome score out of a possible 100.

More than 125 Touchstone Energy cooperatives received an ACSI score in 2018 with an average score of 82.

Across all utilities, the ACSI reports in 2018 that residential consumers found billing harder to understand and requested more energy-saving information and green programs.

On the other hand, consumers reported that across the sector, electric service is reliable, restorations after outages have improved and they’re more satisfied with utilities’ websites.

Southern Indiana consumers can access energy-efficiency tools at www.sinpwr.com.