Customer Assistance Programs for Multi-Family Residential and Other Hard-to-Reach Customers

The objective of this project is to provide water utilities with an array of pragmatic options, evaluation criteria, lessons learned, and guidance for developing customer assistance programs that target 'hard-to-reach' customers who are facing fiscal hardships due to the escalating cost of water and related services. The research provides a clear business process and a set of communication strategies that will support effective provision of targeted assistance for these customers. In addition, a PowerPoint presentation that utility practitioners can use as a quick tutorial, and can adapt and customize to help brief utility colleagues and managers, public officials, community thought leaders, and others on the nature of the H2R challenge and the options available to address it, is provided below under Presentations. Published in 2017.