Tripepi Smith Helps CCA Customers Understand their Bills
While Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) purchase electricity for their residential and business customers, they rely on Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs) to manage transmission and distribution, as well as an important customer interface: billing.
“Energy bills list complex charges ranging from distribution, transition and transmission to revenue decoupling and energy efficiency,” said California Choice Energy Authority (CalChoice) Energy Programs Manager Kathy Wells. “As regulated businesses, IOUs have negotiated these charges into their fees to cover operating networks and meeting environmental goals.”
When Southern California Edison released a new bill format in April 2021, CalChoice called on Tripepi Smith to help their customers better understand how the charges corresponded to specific services.
“As many customers are spending more time at home, they have started to pay more attention to their energy usage,” said Wells. “Energy bills can be confusing, but they don’t have to be. Understanding how to read an energy bill can benefit customers by ensuring they are well-informed about the financial impact of the choices they make such as the percentage of renewable content and peak hour usage.”
Combining its expertise in interpreting complex data, website development, graphic design, videography and CCAs, Team Tripepi Smith developed a new tool for CalChoice customers’ kit: a web-based understanding-your-bill resource. The new resource features an interactive energy bill with detailed definitions, breakdowns of charges and two animated videos.
“It is a goal of CalChoice to help our associate members stay connected to their customers and ensure that information is accessible and digestible. The understanding-your-bill tool helps our associate members’ customers look at their bill, which can oftentimes be complicated, and know exactly what they’re paying for,” said CalChoice Executive Director Jason Caudle. “Tripepi Smith’s team of experts were able to find a creative solution to the bill problem and create an innovative tool that exceeded our expectations.”
Senior Business Analyst Sara Madsen led the project with support from Director Katherine Griffiths, Business Analyst Karen Villasenor and Director Cameron Grimm. The team worked together to write a video script and web content, design a delivery framework and create animated videos that summarize billing details and explain new charges. The package, supplemented by a text-only PDF that presented all of the information in an ADA-compliant format, was delivered in an iframe format that allowed associate members to simply embed a code on their website in order to share the resource with their customers.
“It is always a pleasure to work with CalChoice and their forward-thinking team of professionals,” said Tripepi Smith Senior Business Analyst Sara Madsen. “I am proud of the final product, which has broad applications as a model for helping municipalities explain bills for a broad range of services, not only utilities.”
See an example of the final product here: https://californiachoiceenergyauthority.com/Understanding-Your-Bill/
About CalChoice
California Choice Energy Authority (CalChoice) is a hybrid Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) structure that provides members the ability to leverage CalChoice’s knowledge and staff in order to benefit from lower energy procurement costs, regulatory matters, accounting, and compliance functions which are crucial to the success of a CCA.
About Tripepi Smith
Tripepi Smith is a California-based marketing, technology and public affairs firm that serves for-profit, nonprofit and public agencies. Its unique mix of marketing and technology prowess provides a competitive advantage to agencies seeking to leverage the internet to achieve their communication goals. The firm provides full content creation services, including: ghost writing, collateral development, photography, video production, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing campaigns and website design and execution. Tripepi Smith clients include: City of American Canyon, City of Culver City, City of Cupertino, City of Daly City, City of Duarte, City of Grover Beach, City of Santa Paula, City of Indian Wells, City of La Cañada Flintridge, City of Lake Forest, City of Livermore, City of Napa, City of Paramount, City of Martinez, City of Tracy, City of Vallejo, CalChoice Energy Authority, California Joint Powers Insurance Authority, Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency, Santa Clara County Fire Department, Costa Mesa Sanitary District, Rowland Water District, California Contract Cities Association, California City Management Foundation, Renne Public Law Group, Bob Hall & Associates, West Coast Arborists and Climatec.