It’s a one-stop shop that can be accessed on mobile devices or on the web to help customers find and apply for energy and financial assistance.
BGE—a subsidiary of Exelon—has created Assistance Finder, which gives residential customers a new way to receive personalized energy assistance information and recommendations.
After a customer completes a brief series of questions based on household information, the online tool identifies assistance options and provides easy-to-follow steps to apply. Because not all customers take advantage of the BGE My Account feature, Assistance Finder can be accessed with or without logging in. This means customers aren’t discouraged from finding assistance because of login issues or other technology use challenges.
“The goal of the Assistance Finder is to raise awareness and understanding of available financial assistance, bill management and energy efficiency programs for in-need customers,” Amanda Engel, principal product manager, Exelon operations and oversight, told American Gas. “This has historically been a high-effort task for low- to moderate-income customers to seek out assistance [and] understand what they’re eligible for and apply. But BGE’s goal is to proactively meet customers where they are and connect customers with that help.”
The Assistance Finder tool divides the programs it recommends into three categories: Financial Assistance, Manage My Bill, and Save Money and Energy. Many of the programs in the Financial Assistance and Save Money and Energy categories are managed by state or federal organizations.
“We did a lot of usability testing and interviews with customers and energy agency workers alike to understand the pain points associated with some of those processes, and not all of the results were in BGE or Exelon’s control,” Engel explained. “This meant that as we came up with solutions to help alleviate these pain points, we had to sometimes step back and say, ‘What’s something that we can do to fill this gap?’—even if it wasn’t related to a process we managed end to end.”
The Assistance Finder tool was launched in late September 2022. —Eric Johnson