“If you build it will they come?” How the HM Passport Office moved online

The Passport Office has moved its business online, offering a fully digital application process for virtually all UK passports. Without the benefit of mass marketing, Tim Green, HM Passport Office explains how they achieved this by using multiple research techniques to produce highly effective insights that have informed tactical interventions – resulting in 73% of applicants now using the online application process.

What you’ll learn:

• How to apply a direct marketing ‘funnel’ model to a business challenge
• How to use multiple methodologies in a joined-up way to achieve a single strategic objective
• Practical examples of how insight can drive a complex programme, and be used to set direction in a truly actionable way
• The process of moving from a ‘research as project’ approach to one of ‘research as solution’

The UK Passport Office is transforming its business. Since Spring 2019, it has offered a fully digital customer journey for all application types – with the exception of a very small number of specialist (such as diplomatic) passports.

Its challenge has been to move customers from the traditional route of paper application forms to the new digital service, without the benefit of using mass marketing to communicate its message (being a Government organisation). Instead, HM Passport Office has employed multiple tactical interventions to drive digital applications up from 29% in 2017 to 73% by October 2019.

Insight has shaped the development of the online solution itself – ensuring high levels of journey completion – and provided detailed and specific guidance about where, when and how to reach customers and influence their channel choice.

This has involved a number of methodologies:

• Segmentation – to show the propensity of different customers to use online services
• Journey mapping and analysis – to identify every point at which the option to apply online could occur
• Conjoint analysis – to understand the importance of different pricing for online and offline services
• Qualitative research – to shape specific messages, especially to reach customers who rarely go online in the first place
• Quantitative studies – to reveal who had switched channels, who had chosen not to, and why

A particularly interesting finding from tracking the results was that, while only 62% of the general population knew you could apply for a passport online, a higher proportion of applicants – 73% – actually did so. This finding was a central pillar in guiding the channel shift activity.

Join our Speaker Evening to see how a variety of research techniques can be used to achieve a strategic priority, and how different ways of engaging with internal stakeholders can make insight the critical success factor in achieving results.

About the speaker:

Tim Green started his research career by accident, applying for an editorial job with publications company AGB in 1983. They had no vacancies, but their research business did, and he joined what was at the time Europe’s largest market research agency as a graduate trainee. Subsequently he worked for media owners and an advertising agency before moving to British Telecom, where he worked on the Maureen Lipman and ‘It’s Good to Talk’ campaigns, and from there led a number Marketing and Insight departments.

In 2011, Tim joined an MOD-owned Government agency that produces navigation charts for the Royal Navy and global maritime industry, leading the Marketing and Insight roles there. He moved to HM Passport Office in 2015 as Head of Customer Assurance and today sits on the Board and oversees Customer Insight, Marketing and customer service performance.

Booking will open 6 weeks before the event takes place.