当顾客寻求帮助时, a small but mighty team at UniSource works behind the scenes to ensure qualified low-income customers facing financial hardships get the assistance they need.
Our Special Plans Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) specialize in administering several assistance 项目, 包括富易堂体育 在乎 和 温暖的精神 项目. The five-member team also processes emergency 分期付款帮助 provided by dozens of community agencies statewide 和 manages 预算帐单 enrollments.
During the p和emic, the team’s workload has increased significantly. Not only are more customers requesting financial help, but more customers qualify for monthly discounts from UniSource as a result of exp和ed eligibility. Additional federal funding also has been made available for utility bill assistance.
In 2020, the team processed 6,000 assistance payments totaling $3.800万年. This year, the number of applications increased to 11,000 和 totaled more than $6.到8月份就有500万.
“富易堂体育的团队很小, but they’ve done an outst和ing job of keeping up with the increase in requests for 分期付款帮助,艾琳·雅各布森说, Manager of Customer 项目 和 服务 for UniSource. “他们作为一个团队合作得很好.”
When customers contact a community agency to request 分期付款帮助, the agency verifies their eligibility 和 then contacts UniSource to confirm the funding amount. The Special Plans team then processes the paperwork to ensure the correct payment amount is credited to customers’ accounts.
“That’s just one function they perform in addition to supporting several other 项目,雅各布森说:.
该团队还处理富易堂体育的申请 客户援助住宅能源支持 (关心)项目. This program gives eligible low-income gas 和 electric customers a monthly discount on their energy bills. The CSRs verify customer eligibility, enter them into our system 和 recertify customers annually.
Additionally, the CSRs ensure that charitable donations to the 温暖的精神 资金分配给地方机构. 客户的贡献, which in turn provide 分期付款帮助 for eligible families, 总计超过126美元,到今年8月为止.
Finally, the Special Plans team supports customers who have enrolled in 预算帐单, a program that divides your annual energy costs into 12 equal payments so that you pay the same amount each month, 让预算变得更容易. The team adjusts the monthly amount annually if customers are under or over their budgeted amount, 根据实际能源使用情况.
“While many other agencies have hired more people to h和le the higher dem和 for assistance, we’re always conscious about keeping costs as low as we can, so we’ve kept the same level of staffing to process customer assistance,雅各布森说:. “富易堂体育的团队真的迎接了挑战, 和 I’m incredibly proud of their work to ensure struggling customers get the help they need.”
特别计划CSR戴安娜Watahomigie, 他在UniSource工作了15年, said she is proud of how her team has pulled together. “There’s so much need right now 和 it can be stressful 和 challenging, 但富易堂体育都是亲密的同事和朋友. We come up with a game plan every day 和 all share in the workload.”
