Overcoming Small Business Challenges
Nexant's ComEd Team in the Hinsdale, IL office. Nexant has been running the ComEd Small Business offering since 2011.
Small businesses make up 89% of Commonwealth Edison’s (ComEd) commercial customers. We saw this as an opportunity to achieve significant energy savings and increase customer satisfaction by reaching an underserved market. In partnership with ComEd, we designed and implemented the Small Business offering featuring innovative, cost-effective, and community-based approaches that work across a diverse service territory.
Small business owners were largely unaware of the program. They lacked the time, money, and resources to pursue energy efficiency in their buildings and operations. Our strategy and program design focused on creating a simple path through which customers could participate. We would achieve this by building a closed network of local Energy Efficiency Service Providers who we empower through tools and technology.
Powering Superdawg! See how this iconic restaurant participated in the ComEd Small Business offering and reduced energy consumption by 20% in the first month.
Cost-Effective Scaling
Using the collective experience of our Service Provider network, we created a cost-effective method for customer education and outreach. Our messaging shifted focus to real benefits that would positively impact our customer's lives thanks to marketing, implementation, and administrative efforts. Service Providers were trained and equipped to market the Small Business offering, provide customer education, conduct on-site comprehensive energy assessments, generate recommendations reports immediately, and install energy efficiency improvements. Small Business owners were skeptical at first, but through personal interactions with local Service Providers, word-of-mouth referrals spread quickly and Service Providers even increased their staff to meet demand.
Technologically-Empowered Service Providers
We wanted to consistently deliver a first-rate customer experience, so we created a suite of online tools to help Service Providers achieve this goal. In addition to facilitating an exceptional customer experience and increasing Service Provider efficiency, the Mobile Assessment Tool also enabled us to process nearly 8,000 projects annually. We were able to improve our internal processing efficiency by increasing the accuracy of the incoming pre and final applications thanks to the intuitive design.
Powerful Savings
The ComEd Small Business offering has helped over 42,000 customers complete projects to achieve more than 1,000 GWh gross savings since 2011, saving them over $100 million in first year energy costs alone. Over $60 million of incentives have been paid utilizing diverse service providers.
1000 GWh = greenhouse gas emissions from 1.7 billion miles driven by the average car.
Click here for an example of an email that helped us achieve these savings.
Learn more about EnergyDash, a tool for ComEd, Nexant, and Trade Allies to collaborate as a network and review the project pipeline with this video.
Awards
Nexant has been running the ComEd Small Business offering since 2011. In 2019, we received the ACEEE’s Exemplary Energy Efficiency Program award and in 2016, we were given the Outstanding Safety Partner Award. Also in 2016, ComEd won an Inspiring Efficiency Impact Award from MEEA for making a significant contribution to market transformation and reduced energy consumption. The program won these awards while maintaining a nearly perfect safety record.
