most important customer, The

Electric Perspectives, Sep/Oct 2002 by Leonard, J Wayne, Nixon, Walter, Wagoner, Mary H

From the Foundation, we earmarked $500,000 to pay a matching portion of Individual Development Accounts to help first-time, low-income homeowners find financing.

Following up on an idea given to us by a consumer advocate, we used Entergy Charitable Foundation funds to implement the Kalkstein Weather Model, which offers fair but realistic formulas for defining when extreme weather necessitates a temporary suspension of utility shut-offs.

Advocacy and Relationship Building

We came to the conclusion that, whatever our intentions, Entergy and other utility companies had been making war on the poor. By launching our new strategy, we decided to stop battling and start helping our low-income customers. We are leveraging our corporate size and strength to become the nation's best ally of those who are dedicated to helping the poor.

We started by recognizing the people whom business too often considers its enemies-low-income advocates-and asking them to sit with us at the table. We then implemented a strategy of improving relationships with both our neighborhood low-income advocates and customers. We found that most advocates want to work cooperatively to solve problems rather than go toe-to-toe with us, if we welcome them as partners.

Then we formed a corporate-wide team called the Low Income Champions, made up of Entergy employees in all our states. We chose Entergy professionals who already knew-or who came to know through our outreach efforts-the role and abilities of the low-income advocates and agencies that serve our customers and who respected and appreciated their efforts.

Using the Champions, we began building partnerships with those advocates to pursue common interests and consensus on issues like energy affordability and housing. These kinds of partnerships are valuable in achieving any business goal, but particularly when there are mutual benefits to be gained by everyone-not just the utility, but customers and their advocates and the government agencies that serve them.

With our financial grants, we are offering meaningful benefits to those in need. They can see this is not a public relations exercise. And we know we have to put real budgets and real dollars behind our words.

Entergy is providing the leadership and employee support for creating "Customer Energy Assistance Program" initiatives in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and the city of New Orleans. (See the sidebar, "The Program Push.") These are unique, utility-incubated, coalition-supported initiatives that, if adopted by regulators, would create permanent sources of ratepayer funding to help low-income people weatherize their homes and reduce their energy bills. Such a program does not rely on scarce federal dollars or complex changes in federal laws or programs, but instead promotes oldfashioned self-help.

We also are working with Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu to change a very inequitable policy of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that discriminates against warm-weather states by ignoring the fact that hot temperatures can be as deadly as cold. Assistance for home cooling is just as necessary to the health and safety of low-income persons as assistance for home heating.