Expanding Energy Assistance Enrollment
Solix Case Study
Situation
One of the largest municipally owned electric utilities in the U.S. sought to increase participation in its Customer Assistance Program (CAP), which provides discounts on electric service to low-income households. While the program was well established, many qualified households had not enrolled due to barriers in awareness, access, or administrative complexity.
Objectives
Solix was engaged to design and implement a scalable, compliant enrollment solution that would:
- Increase overall program enrollment by 30% through a streamlined, customer-friendly process.
- Simplify eligibility verification while maintaining compliance with program requirements.
- Minimize the burden on customers by reducing paperwork and manual documentation.
- Support high-volume enrollment through automation and data-driven decisioning.
Challenges
- Identifying eligible populations across a large and diverse service area.
- Traditional verification methods and enrollment strategies had already been deployed with limited success.
- Maintaining compliance while processing a high volume of enrollments efficiently.
Solution
Solix implemented a data-driven, tiered enrollment model that used census tract data to identify and verify eligible households:
- Census-Based Identification: Service addresses were mapped to census tracts to estimate the likelihood of household eligibility based on income characteristics.
- Confidence Scoring: Based on the services addresses’ census tract, households were assigned a confidence score, indicating the probability of eligibility.
- Tiered Enrollment Process:
- Households with a high likelihood of eligibility were automatically enrolled, reducing administrative effort.
- Additional scrutiny was applied to households with lower confidence levels, including outreach to verify eligibility through verbal attestation or documentation.
- This balanced approach improved efficiency, reduced customer effort, and maintained full regulatory compliance.
Results
- 30% increase in program enrollment, achieving the client’s target.
- Lowered enrollment barriers through a customer-friendly, data-driven process.
- Enhanced equity and access by reaching more eligible low-income households.
- Enabled the utility to scale participation efficiently while ensuring compliance.