DWP: making a real difference to the lives of people, every day
When your services have to work for users of every age and demographic, understanding what people actually need is the hard part. Here's how DWP Digital scaled that understanding beyond costly manual research.
DWP needed to understand user needs across roughly 20 million people spanning every age and demographic. Traditional methods — surveys and researchers travelling nationally — were time-intensive and expensive, making it nearly impossible to scale insight for products that have to serve such diverse populations.
DWP Digital builds services used by millions of people across the whole of the UK — and those services have to work for users of every age, background and level of digital confidence. Understanding what all of those users actually need is the foundation of getting them right.
But the traditional ways of finding out — surveys, and dedicated researchers travelling the country — were slow and expensive. At the scale DWP operates, they simply couldn't keep pace with the breadth of people the department serves.
The solution
DWP Digital partnered with Wordnerds to analyse user sentiment and needs at scale — without losing the human judgement that public services depend on.
Sentiment and needs at scale
User sentiment and needs are analysed across every channel, moving beyond costly manual research to AI-driven analysis that keeps pace with a national population.
Human-centred validation
AI does the heavy lifting, but human judgement stays in the loop — so insight at scale never comes at the expense of the care these services demand.
Insight that reaches everyone
Listening at scale surfaces the needs of users who rarely show up in traditional research — across every age and demographic the department serves.
The impact
93% take-up, 97% satisfaction — and the stress surveys had missed
DWP's new Apply for Child Maintenance service hit 93% take-up in month one and 97% satisfaction. Analysis of 300,000 tweets revealed widespread stress and anxiety among users that surveys had missed — prompting policymakers to prioritise specific areas for intensive research and service improvement.
The new Apply for Child Maintenance service launched to a 93% take-up rate in its first month and a 97% satisfaction rate — evidence that designing around real user needs pays off.
Listening at scale also surfaced things conventional research couldn't. Analysis of 300,000 tweets revealed widespread stress and anxiety among users — a signal surveys had missed — and gave policymakers a clear steer on where to focus deeper research and improvement.
About DWP
The Department for Work and Pensions is the UK's largest public service department, responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policy.
It administers approximately £212 billion in payments a year and serves roughly 20 million people nationwide.
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