Customer Advocate, Portuguese speaking

About us

Superpowered. Meaningful work. Human impact. A story we're proud to tell. This is what matters to us at National Grid.  In a world of complexity and unanswered questions, there is one thing we're certain about: the power of our people. Join us in our goal to deliver 100% fossil-free heat to our customers by 2050!

National Grid is hiring a Customer Advocate, who is fluent in Portuguese for our Northborough, MA  
This is a Hybrid Role - Must live within a commutable distance to one of our locations
 

Job Purpose

 
As a Customer Advocate, you’ll work directly with National Grid’s most vulnerable customers and the various external support agencies and advocacy groups that support them. Your mission will be to improve the lives of these customers through driving awareness of, enrollment in, and engagement around the various tools National Grid has in place to help income-eligible customers manage the affordability and volatility of their monthly energy spend. You will also serve as the voice of these customers internally within National Grid, representing their interests, perspectives and needs as the organization continues to develop its strategies and approaches to better serving income-eligible customers and the programs and offers we put in place to do so.
 

Key Accountabilities

• Work with customers one on one for billing, payments, negotiating payment agreements, LIHEAP, outage preparation, protections certification, energy efficiency support.
• Develop relationships with internal and external stakeholders to obtain and share information on social care opportunities and developments, as well as provide technical advice and build bases of influence.
• Identify and act on new external channels through which to engage income-eligible customers and drive awareness of and participation in relevant Company programs.
• Develop relationships with relevant external agencies and organizations, establishing your role as these external groups’ ‘go to’ resource for all things National Grid, and empowering them to better engage and refer their low-income constituents on our behalf.
• Manage and prioritize referrals from email, vendors, call center, field, and other internal communications in line with policies. 
• Develop and manage the approach to special cases (e.g. customers with special needs) ensuring a tailored and effective response in line with expectations.
• Manage the day-to-day relationship with relevant internal parties and external agencies and bodies to understand requirements, deliver appropriate, customized solutions and advice, and build cross-functional working in line with National Grid policies and processes.
• Through collecting and analyzing input from your customer interactions and community engagement, serve as the ‘voice’ of our income-eligible customers in helping to inform and influence the design of National Grid programs and offerings targeted towards the income-eligible community.
• Serve as the public face of National Grid in various community outreach settings likely to be attended by income-eligible customers, including periodic Energy Expositions (“Expos”).
• Ensure processes, practices and procedures are followed are in line with National Grid policies and compliant with legislation and regulations.
• Develop, distribute, and prepare training material, brochures and supporting documentation to relevant customers and internal colleagues.
• Build upon technical/professional skills within customer advocacy to continually grow your personal contribution to the business.
• Develop and utilize peer group network to absorb and apply technical/professional best practice within the customer and social care arena.
• Travel to customer locations and other NGRID facilities is required, and this includes community events that may be hosted in socioeconomically challenged locations.
   

Qualifications

Knowledge & Experience Required:

• Bilingual speaker/Portuguese is REQUIRED.
• Bachelor's degree preferred and 1+ years of related customer advocacy experience.
• Demonstrated success in a customer service setting, ideally in a position focused on working with low-income customers.
• Knowledge and experience with (or the demonstrated ability to learn quickly about) one or more areas of the Company’s customer information systems including CSS, customer account management, financial structures, energy management, information systems management, document management.
• Knowledge and experience with (or the demonstrated ability to learn quickly about) various forms of social service support programs available to the income-eligible community, and a demonstrated history of communicat