According to MarketSearch, 98.7 percent of Santee Cooper residential customers were satisfied with the state-owned utility in 2011. By comparison, the average for South Carolina utilities was 89 percent, and the national average was 89.4 percent. Santee Cooper has consistently outscored state and national averages in the annual survey.

“Santee Cooper’s mission is to improve the quality of life for the people of South Carolina, and Santee Cooper employees work tirelessly to achieve our mission,” said Santee Cooper President & CEO Lonnie Carter. “We are encouraged and humbled by our customers’ confidence in what we do and will continue to work to keep that confidence.”

Other highlights show near perfect scores that reflect customers’ positive attitudes toward minimizing outages, reliability of service, response to customer questions and concerns, quality of power and Santee Cooper’s reputation.

When asked about reliability, 100 percent of those who responded indicated they were satisfied their service has been reliable and the restoration of power after outages has been quick, and 99 percent agreed Santee Cooper keeps power outages to a minimum.

In terms of Santee Cooper’s environmental record, 96 percent of residential customers say they are satisfied with Santee Cooper’s efforts at helping customers learn to use energy more efficiently. In addition, 97 percent agree Santee Cooper is doing a good job of protecting the environment, while 96 percent are satisfied that Santee Cooper plays a leadership role in conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.