The Warm Home Discount Scheme eligibility checker was relaunched on 1st November 2023. This GOV.UK service enables English, Welsh, and Scottish citizens to check if they are eligible for a discount on their energy bills this winter.

Working closely with the Department for Energy, Security, and Net Zero (DESNZ), System C Innovation Delivery has improved the eligibility checker by enabling users to self-serve more easily, helping reduce calls to the website’s helpline. Here we explore how we achieved this.

How Does the Eligibility Checker Work?

The Warm Home Discount Scheme is available to citizens that meet either the following criteria:

• in receipt of the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit
• on a low income and living in a property that is a high cost to heat

The eligibility checker asks users about the Benefits and Pension Credits that they receive, as well as the type of property that they live in.

The site uses this information to calculate whether the user qualifies for an energy discount and informs them of their result.

Improving the Eligibility Checker

The eligibility checker exists to help people self-identify where they may be eligible for support, also reducing the number of people needing to contact the Warm Home Discount Scheme’s helpline.

Each year, DESNZ update the eligibility checker, improving the site’s user journey while ensuring it reflects latest changes in policy. With potentially up to 300,000 users per month, any improvements that benefit users will help reduce the number of helpline calls.   

Given System C Innovation Delivery’s expertise in creating easy-to-use public-facing websites – including  GOV.UK services – and deploying agile techniques, we were tasked with reviewing the site’s performance during the previous winter and improving it for this year.

What Did We Improve?

This year, work focused on three key areas:

• Improving site content
• Improving the decision matrix
• Improving resources for helpline staff

Site Content

Working with UX design specialists Fruto Studio, we ran a discovery to identify further improvements to the site’s user experience. Fruto conducted interviews with the DESNZ team, as well as usability testing sessions with the eligibility checker’s users.

After identifying changes to the layout, copy, and colour of certain pages, we mocked-up new designs in Figma, ensuring that they followed the GOV.UK Service Standard. Fruto then iterated these in a co-design session with the DESNZ team, before our front-end developers converted them into interactive webpages.

Further user research, coupled with insights from Google Analytics, showed that the new designs enhanced the user experience. Crucially, they helped give users a clearer idea of both their outcome and how the site had determined their eligibility, helping contribute to a reduction in the volume of helpline calls.

Decision Matrix

Working with DESNZ, we also improved the eligibility checker’s underlying decision matrix, with the goal of ensuring that even more users receive a definitive result.

To achieve this, we built APIs to new data sources, each made up of millions of data rows and items.

This ensures that the decision matrix uses a stronger evidence-base to calculate eligibility.

It also saves users from researching answers to certain questions, which results in fewer errors inputting information and contributes to more precise results.

Helpline Resources

Along with reducing the volume of helpline calls, we also had the task of ensuring that helpline agents could process their calls more efficiently.

So, we added a reference number to the eligibility checker that users can supply when they call the helpline, enabling helpline agents to look up the user’s responses.

To do this, helpline agents use a new tool that we also built, allowing them to run further checks against the decision matrix.

“Previously, users would call the helpline and have to repeat the answers that they had already entered online,” says Tim Palmer, Head of Project Delivery at System C Innovation Delivery. “The reference number and new tool will greatly speed up the process of answering calls.”

Project Analysis

At a time when the costs of heating a home have sharply risen, System C Innovation Delivery is proud to have improved the eligibility checker, enabling us to play an important role in helping people with their energy bills this winter.

Next Steps

This was an exciting project for System C Innovation Delivery to take on. If you are working on a GOV.UK service and you require assistance with either design, front-end or back-end work, please do get in touch.

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