Digital

How text message notifications helped more than 2000 Social Security Scotland clients use unspent benefit payments

January 22, 2025 by deborahamzil No Comments | Category Client communications, Content Design, Digital, Digital Public Services, Social Security Scotland, User-centred design

Guest blog post from Jake Keith, Content Designer, Social Security Scotland.

A Social Security Scotland SMS (short Message Service) pilot led by the Product and Design team has helped hundreds of people access cash paid to them but left unspent. A total of 2,205 clients have spent money on their prepaid card since the start of the Best Start Foods notification drive.

It’s a huge success story involving experts in user centred design, business analysis and product development.

Where the problem was

For some time, the organisation has been trying to encourage people getting Best Start Foods to spend the money on their cards. Most do use the cash but there are some people with significant unspent balances.

The payments are designed to help towards the costs of buying healthy foods during pregnancy and for young children, including formula milk. That means the payments could make a big difference to parents dealing with the expense of raising a child.

Who got the texts

Two batches of texts were sent in summer 2024. They were all sent to people who have activated their card at some point and have a large unspent balance.

Team’s pride over results

In the weeks after the texts were sent, the team pored over the statistics. They showed lots of these people spending money they may not have known they had. As of 21 August 2024, 29% had reduced their balance.

Heather McLaren, who is leading on parent project ‘Getting Communications Right for Clients’, says those involved are proud of the results. She said: “We got feedback that after just two weeks over £33,000 had been spent and one person spent £555. There were genuine celebrations in the office to be like ‘this is amazing’.

“It’s the immediacy that’s amazing, that somebody’s been in right away and been able to go to the shop and spend the money. You can make your own assumptions about what they’ve been able to buy that week that they had maybe missed out on previously.

“It can definitely give you a wee kick, in terms of why we do the things we do and how important it is to get these things right for people.”

Why we sent texts

Letters were initially sent to clients telling them they had a large unspent balance in October 2023. Although this made a difference, ultimately only 11% reduced their balance in the first few weeks after. The government Notify service was used to send the texts in batches to people. At 2p per text, it is around 97% cheaper than sending a letter. It’s also much quicker and prompts action more effectively.

Content design approach

The content was designed by Sarah Waterfield who said her team colleagues helped her simplify the text in a crit. She also redesigned a Best Start Foods mygov.scot page to make it more clear and action-based.

She said: “Initially we had a few different versions of the content for different situations, but we pared it back (after a good crit!) – we realised the key message is simple: you’ve got money. And the action is: go to the mygov page.

“We needed to support such a brief text with a really strong and helpful resource on mygov.scot page. We redesigned this page and referenced the text message on it to support users in their journey from receiving their text to spending their balance.”

“The original mygov.scot page was originally a long text page that took a long time to scroll down. It was not scannable or optimised for people on mobile. It did not focus on the actions users needed to take and had long paragraphs without many headings.

How the mygov page is improved

The new version:

• reassures text message recipients they are in the right place by reference the text we sent
• is easy to scan – broken up by action-based headings
• is selective about the information
• uses bullet points, headings and callouts to break up text
• is more scrollable for people on mobile – it uses accordions so users can expand the parts they’re interested in based on descriptive headings (approx. 67% of mygov.scot users are accessing the pages on their mobile phone)

When the texts were sent, there were big spikes in visits to the mygov.scot page Sarah redesigned. The data shows thousands were opening the link sent in their SMS.

Sarah added: “We may decide to send a text message to clients who have never activated their cards. If we do, we might change the content of the text, however these are the users we know least about as they’re less represented in user research.”

Getting client communications right

The wider ‘Getting client communications right’ project aims to:

• tailor communications to individual preferences and needs
• significantly reducing the expenses associated with paper notifications

The SMS is just one example of how the team are doing this. There’s another pilot about to launch for Winter Heating Payment. It will see clients sent outcomes by e-mail.

Get in touch at contentdesign@socialsecurity.gov.scot if you’d like to hear more about our work on client communications.

Tags: digital public services, scottish government, user centred design

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