Providing Residents With Electricity and Telephone Discounts
Solix Case Study
Situation
The low-income residential customer rate reduction program, regulated by the Public Utility Commission (PUC), is a state-level program established to provide electricity and telephone services at a reduced cost to over four million eligible residents. After working with a partner that managed the database of eligible electric customers, the PUC engaged Solix to design and implement a more robust solution for both electric and telephone users.
Objectives
- Design and rollout a customized platform to aggregate and match applicant enrollment information for electric and telephone customers.
- Coordinate the receipt of monthly files from Health and Human Services Commission and utility service providers.
- Process high volumes of paper and electronic applications, quickly and accurately.
- Provide timely, professional customer service regarding program information and application status.
Challenges
- Ability to sort, key, review, and approve large volumes of monthly service applications.
- Enable fast, efficient turn-around to meet program requirements.
- Ensure information from multiple sources, delivered in multiple forms, is collected and normalized for processing.
Solution
- Developed and implemented customized end-to-end eligibility, qualification, and customer care solution tailored to specific program needs.
- Built and managed a customized low-income website for information and application intake.
- Developed custom platform to streamline customer information to call center agents, in partnership with Salesforce.com.
- Unique combination of program design and technology to process large quantities of data from multiple, disparate source.
Results
- More than $1B in low-income awards have been qualified and approved to date.
- Identified as many as +1,000,000 customers/month who qualify for electric and/or telephone discounts.
- Customer experience has been improved with the introduction of near real time update regarding application status.
- Solix has served as the administrator and managed all aspects of applicant qualification, enrollment, and renewals in the program for 20 years.