spurring savings innovations - prosperity now · spurring savings innovation speaking to clients...

1Spurring Savings Innovation

Spurring Savings Innovations

Human Insight Methods for Savings ProgramsBy Pamela Chan, Parker Cohen, Dominique Derbigny and Shira Markoff

2 Spurring Savings Innovation

acknowledgements

About MetLife FoundationMetLife Foundation was created in 1976 to continue MetLife’s long tradition of corporate contributions and community involvement. Since its founding through the end of 2014, MetLife Foundation has provided more than $670 million in grants and $70 million in pro-gram-related investments to organizations addressing issues that have a positive impact in their communities. Today, the Foundation is dedicated to advancing financial inclusion, committing $200 million to help build a secure future for individuals and communities around the world. To learn more about MetLife Foundation, visit www.metlife.org.

About CFED CFED empowers low- and moderate-income households to build and preserve assets by advancing policies and programs that help create the opportunity economy, including buying a home, pursuing higher education, starting a business and saving for the future. As a leading source for data about household financial security and policy solutions, CFED understands what families need to succeed. We promote programs on the ground and invest in social enterprises that create pathways to financial security and opportunity for millions of people

Established in 1979 as the Corporation for Enterprise Development, CFED works nationally and internationally through its offices in Washington, DC; Durham, North Carolina; and San Francisco, California.

The authors would like to thank the six organizations and their staff who participated in the SILC project:

■ John H. Boner Community Center ■ Earn to Learn ■ The Midas Collaborative ■ People’s Community Action Corporation ■ Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union ■ United Way for Greater Austin

Special thanks to the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University—specifically, Mariel Beasley, Jamie Foehl and Susan Wunderink—who served as advisors to the participating organizations. Additionally, we’d like to thank Lauren Gates of Raise Texas and Laura Rosen of the Center for Public Policy Priorities for helping to make this project a success. Finally, we would also like to acknowledge the CFED staff who helped create this paper, including Christopher Bernal, Merrit Gillard, Sandiel Grant, Kate Griffin, Sean Luechtefeld and Kasey Wiedrich.

Finally, we are grateful for the generous support of the MetLife Foundation for the SILC project and for the opportunity to work with Evelyn Stark, who served as a valuable thought partner throughout the project.


INTRODUCTION

Virtually every organization running a savings program has had this experience: you spend a great deal of time and resources setting up what seems like a sure-fire program, yet hardly anyone takes advantage of it. Or, worse yet, those who do sign up do not successfully complete the program. What went wrong? What could you have done differently? The answer to these questions might be found in the design process.

For many organizations, setting up new programs typically involves consulting existing program data, talking to other expert practitioners or researchers, soliciting ideas from management and responding to funder priorities. One essential element is missing from this formula: the clients. If you are not gathering your clients’ perspectives during each step of your design pro-cess, you are missing key insights into their wants and needs that could help you create a more responsive program that clients not only want to participate in, but in which they can participate successfully.

About this Brief

Based on the experiences of participants in the Savings Innovation Learning Cluster (SILC), this brief explores four human insights research and design methods—client interviews, client journey mapping, concept boards and prototyping—which you can use to develop more effective programs. These methods help you to:

■ Determine clients’ needs, wants, goals and behaviors so you can create services tailored to those needs. ■ Develop messages that resonate with clients to attract and retain program participants. ■ Identify barriers in the service delivery process that prevent successful completion of the program.

Are your savings programs not yielding the results you expected? Your clients might be able to tell you why.


ABOUT THE SILC PROJECTWith support from MetLife Foundation, CFED launched the Savings Innovation Learning Cluster (SILC) in 2014 to ex-pedite new and effective approaches to building financial capability, especially with regards to savings. Through SILC, we worked with six organizations to design service innovations aimed at helping low- and moderate-income clients save. Over the course of 14 months, CFED guided SILC participants through a research and design process that leveraged human insights to create and test new savings products and strategies. The human insights process takes into account client needs, preferences, and behaviors to design more responsive and effective programs. While each participating orga-nization had extensive experience in program implementation, generally speaking, their existing programs were designed with little upfront feedback from clients about their needs or preferences. To overcome this challenge, SILC was designed to provide participating organizations with the time and resources—particularly technical assistance from CFED and the Center for Advanced Hindsight, as well as peer support—to engage in a design process that combined key insights from clients with applied behavioral economics concepts. The chart below lists the participants and their innovations.

SERVICE

LOCATION

PROBLEM STATEMENT

SOLUTION

Individual Development Accounts Employer benefitsIndividual Development Accounts

for Higher Education

Indianapolis, IN Austin, TX Tucson, AZ

Many IDA participants have to withdraw their savings and drop out of the program, because they do not have a cushion for variations in expenses.

Employees at UWATX’s partner businesses do not have sufficient savings to weather financial hardships.

Some high school and college student IDA participants miss required monthly deposits, which puts them in jeopardy of not receiving their match funds or being terminated from the program.

Pair an emergency savings account with prize-linked incentives, offered to participants in JHBCC’s financial education course, which is required prior to enrollment in the IDA program.

Provide low-income employees with a split direct deposit option to easily divert money from each paycheck into savings. This option is presented by human resources representatives during an in-person staff meeting that also includes a bank representative who can open savings accounts for employees.

Provide text message reminders informed by behavioral strategies to increase students’ likelihood of making monthly deposits.

The participants


The six participating organizations worked through several steps to design and implement solutions to the problems they identified. The four methods they used to gather human insights —client interviews, client journey mapping, con-cept boards and prototyping—proved particularly impactful. In the pages that follow, each of these methods is exam-ined in depth, starting with that the method is and explaining how it works in action. At the end of each section that describes one of the four methods, we identify tips to help guide readers through the process of getting started with their own design innovations.

These four methods are presented in the order that they would be completed in a typical human insights research and design project at CFED, and the order in which they were undertaken through SILC. However, depending on where you are in the program design and delivery process, you should feel free choose the methods that are most relevant to you.

SERVICE

LOCATION

PROBLEM STATEMENT

SOLUTION

Lending Energy Assistance Individual Development Accounts

Syracuse, NY St. Louis, MO Boston, MA

Many clients are stuck in a loan cycle, routinely coming back to the credit union to obtain additional small loans to help them through difficult financial circumstances.

Participants in the energy assis-tance program receive dramatic reductions in their monthly energy bills. However, they rarely put the money saved through the program into a savings account, missing an opportunity to gain a cushion that can be utilized when emergencies arise.

Despite applying and being accepted into one of Midas’s partner’s IDA program, not all clients open their accounts and make an initial deposit within six months.

Make savings an automatic part of loan repayment by providing a joint savings and repayment option for new loans.

Integrate a matched savings product into the energy assistance program to help clients build up savings and avoid missing pay-ments.

Make the initial deposit process easier by sending reminder emails to participants with clear instructions and links to make their initial deposits.

Spurring Savings Innovation

Speaking to clients individually provides a more robust glimpse into their lives, opinions, goals, decision-making and behaviors.

OverviewIndividual client interviews are structured conversations with current, past or potential clients. The intimate setting of an individual interview allows you to learn about people’s situations, challenges, hopes, desires, aspirations, prefer-ences and requirements. If done well, individual interviews are invaluable during program planning because they can challenge assumptions that you consciously or unconsciously formed about your clients. Furthermore, if structured properly, client inter-views can provide you a flexible, low-cost and easily executed way of getting to know your clients.

For SILC participants, client interviews yielded valuable insights about:

■ The complicated and sometimes contradictory emotions clients experience around saving and spending. ■ Certain language that did or did not resonate with clients. ■ Clients’ preferred methods for receiving information and communicating with program staff.

Method in Action @ the John H. Boner Community CenterWhat they did: Staff at JHBCC held interviews with current IDA participants. In each interview session, they had two staff members—one to lead the questions and the other to take notes. They focused their questions around the types and frequen-cy of financial emergencies clients experienced, the feelings participants had around the emergencies, and how prepared they felt for future emergencies.

Key Insight: Clients definition of “financial emergencies” differed from that of JHBCC staff. Rather than using the term to describe infrequent, unpredictable events, clients often used the term to refer to more routine expenses that they did not have enough money to cover, such as heating bills that got higher than they could afford. As a result of this insight, Boner Center staff adjust-ed the way they talked about the accounts with clients. They removed the word “emergency” from pilot materials and replaced it with “unexpected expense.”

CLIENT INTERVIEWSMETHOD



Getting StartedInterviewing is a skill that gets better with training and experience. However, even an amateur interviewer can glean helpful insights from speaking one-on-one with clients. Here are some tips to help you get started:

1. Identify what you want to learn from clients. Typically, this includes learning about the types of challenges clients face with regards to saving and if/how they are currently saving.

2. Identify who you want to interview. This usually includes current, former or potential participants. Make sure that the group of people you interview is representative of the different demographics or types of partici-pants served by your program.

3. Schedule interviews. Plan on your interview session lasting 45-60 minutes. Try to reduce the barriers to your clients’ participation in the interview. For example, you might conduct the interview after weekday work hours.

4. Develop questions to reference in your interview. These should be designed to address the learning objectives you identified in the first tip above.

5. Select interviewers. Try to have two interviewers—one person to ask questions and the second to take notes.

6. Conduct the interviews. If possible, do this in-person. Be sure to use probing follow-up questions—such as “Why?” and “How?”—to obtain more robust information. Also, be sure to listen for statements that challenge your assumptions or beliefs about your clients.

7. Document the interviews. When each interview is completed, record the main takeaways. After all inter-views are completed, review all of the takeaways and identify themes and key insights from the interviews.



OverviewA client journey map is a visual representation of the steps a client takes as she or he interacts with your pro-gram. It represents a typical client journey as the person moves from first hearing about the service all the way to program completion. For example, if you run an Individual Development Account (IDA) program, the client journey starts when the client first hears about the program, and ends when she or he purchases an asset or exits the program early.

Client journey maps help your organization:

■ Create a collective sense of your service from the clients’ point of view. ■ Document customer behaviors and needs across various touch-points between your organization and clients. ■ Identify inconsistencies in service delivery. ■ Identify areas of opportunity for improvements and new ideas.

SILC participants found the client mapping exercise invaluable. Until this exercise, the key staff members at each of the orga-nizations had not had an opportunity to come together, review their various client touch-points and reflect upon the overall client experience. These exercises revealed insights about:

■ Cumbersome processes involving multiple, unnecessary steps that could be affecting client enrollment or retention. ■ Optimal moments during program participation when clients might be more ready or able to save. ■ Inconsistencies in service delivery where staff members were implementing processes in different ways, leading to

different client experiences.

Method in Action @ People’s Community Action CorporationWhat they did: Working with staff from CFED and Center for Advanced Hindsight (CAH), the two project leads from Peo-ple’s Community Action Corporation (PCAC) held a four-hour meeting to create a client journey map for participants in the Keeping Current program. With CFED and CAH staff facilitating, the team brainstormed the steps that clients go through, as

Diagramming the flow of your services from your clients’ perspective will help you identify key barriers that are limiting participation, savings behavior and program completion.

CLIENT JOURNEY MAPPINGMETHOD


they understood it, from the moment clients realize they need help with their electric bill and find out about Keeping Current, all the way through the time a client completes or drops out of the program. As the project leads talked about the process, the CFED and CAH facilitators identified points from earlier conversations with frontline staff where different or additional process steps were mentioned. After this opening discussion, the group looked at the brainstormed steps and drew them in a process chart to determine how the steps flowed together. Along the way, they kept a list of areas where the team needed to clarify information from frontline staff and a list of questions to ask clients in individual interviews. Finally, the team identified areas in the client journey that were potentially confusing or cumbersome.

Key Insight: Clients had significantly different experiences during enrollment and participation, and these experiences differed from how PCAC staff understood the client journey. In trying to put together a cohesive client journey map, PCAC staff quickly realized that they were not on the same page across the program about how to provide services to Keeping Current participants. Clients had significantly different experiences during enrollment and participation depending on the location they went to and the case manager they were assigned. Staff determined that to successfully incorporate a savings component within the energy assistance program, they would first need to standardize the client experience.

PCAC Client Journey Map

CLIENT NEEDS

ENERGY ASSISTANCE

OR ANOTHER SERVICE

Doctor Referral

Call Reception

Walk In

Agency Referral

Friend or Family

Community Event

INTAKE PROCESS - NEW CLIENTS ENTER PCAC

SYSTEM CLIENT RECEIVES INTAKE FORMS

CLIENT WAITS FOR INTAKE PERSON

Intake staff sits with client to enter info into database

Documentation collected: *SS cards for all household members *proof of residency *proof of income *disconnect notice

Assessment determines number & type of referrals

CLIENT MAY LEAVE

ENERGY ASSISTANCE

IDENTIFIED AS A NEED

Client informed that no

funds are available

funds

CLIENT WAITS TO MEET ENERGY

SPECIALIST

CLIENT MAY

LEAVE

UTILITY INFO VERIFIED, KC PROGRAM ELIGIBILITY

DETERMINED

Client told about 1/12th

payment

CAN CLIENT PAY?

YES, NOW

YES, LATER

CLIENT CANNOT PAY

Energy Specialist calls other

agencies for funding

CLIENT LEAVES

NO FUNDS

CLIENT REMOVED

FROM PROGRAM

PCAC PAYS 1/12TH PAYMENT

CLIENT IS ENROLLED IN

KEEPING CURRENT

CLIENT GETS APPROVAL

LETTER FROM AMEREN UE

CLIENT PAYS 1/12TH PAYMENT

& CLIENT IS ENROLLED IN

KEEPING CURRENT

CLIENT GETS REDUCED BILL

PCAC CLIENT PROCESS MAP SAVINGS INNOVATION – New Clients CLIENT

DOES NOT PAY

CLIENT GOES INTO

RECOVERY CLIENT PAYS

Keeping Current & Savings

Innovation Orientation

=

Opportunity to Introduce Savings

CLIENT RECEIVES PAYMENT REMINDER

LETTER CLIENT LEAVES

NO FUNDS

ENERGY SPECIALIST Introduces client to

Keeping Current

ENERGY SPECIALIST Introduces client to Savings Innovation

DOES CLIENT HAVE SAVINGS

ACCOUNT?

YES – Enroll in Auto Save

NO – Refer to Bank

Remove Barriers Account Opened

CLIENT GETS BILL CREDIT

Client Remains

in Keeping Current

CLIENT SAVES

Client RETURNS

Pre-Match Client Does

Not Receive Post-Match

Client Does Not

Save

Client Receives

Post-Match

Client Keeps Pre-Match

INCREASED FINANCIAL STABILITY

Client Able to Manage Bumps


Getting StartedIf you’re new to client journey maps, you can get started by creating a simple map based on the perspectives of staff and by conducting a quick assessment of where clients may face barriers or frustrations. Here are a few steps to get you started:

1. Gather staff who interact with clients, or whose work affects the client experience, for a meeting to develop the client journey map. Staff who work directly with clients, such as intake workers or case managers, as well as staff who design and execute services, such as program managers, should participate in the client mapping process. The amount of time you need to spend on the exercise will depend on the complexity of your program and the scope of your client journey map.

2. Identify all the steps the client typically takes from first leaning about the program to completing (or oth-erwise exiting) the program. Be sure to list each step separately and identify alternative paths, but don’t get too lost in the details. While clients’ journeys may differ, your objective is to lay out the typical journey for most clients. If your group gets overwhelmed with the number of steps or options for the client journey, just ask yourselves, “what happens to most clients?” and move forward with those options.

3. Throughout this process, identify areas of uncertainty or disagreement between staff members, and sched-ule time to revisit these after the exercise is completed. Variations across staff practices or areas where there are gaps between expectation and implementation often surface during client journey mapping. These are important to note, but to keep your process on track, you should plan to address them later.

4. Present the map to colleagues that could not be present for the exercise. Be sure to verify the map with other staff members to ensure that no steps were missed or that no steps were understood differently from their experience.

5. Review the final map, paying particular attention to potential barriers. Take time to discuss areas of the client experience that may have barriers that affect client success or do not align with what you have learned about clients’ needs and behaviors through interviews.

1 Article available at: https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/journey-mapping-qa-how-to-research-for-customer-journey-maps/

2 Article available at: https://hbr.org/2010/11/using-customer-journey-maps-to/

To learn about advanced techniques for customer journey maps, check out “Journey Mapping Q&A: How to Research for Customer Journey Maps,”1 by Kerry Bodine, and “Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Customer Experience”2 by Adam Richardson.


OverviewConcept boards are one-page information sheets that succinctly describe a program or product. They typically look like unrefined advertisements, as they only display the most critical details of a program. Concept boards are useful while designing new programs because they can be presented to clients, potential clients, staff or other stakeholders to gauge reac-tions and solicit feedback on a proposed program or service.

SILC participants made concept boards that distilled the key elements of their programs and explained the benefits of par-ticipation for potential clients. They presented their concept boards to potential clients, colleagues, CFED staff and others to gauge initial reactions to the main elements of the program. SILC participants used this feedback to make further refinements to their program design.

Method in Action @ Cooperative Federal Credit Union What they did: To explain the concept of a loan repayment plan with an automatic savings option, the team at Cooperative Federal Credit Union (Cooperative Federal) brainstormed the idea of an image of people sharing berries. For the concept board, they included the tagline, “Some for You, Some for Me,” and a picture of a bucket of berries being split into two. They showed the concept board to staff and clients, and asked them what they thought of the concept and if it clearly described the new product.

Key Insight: Outside input is crucial to creating a program that is responsive to, attractive to and easily understood by clients. The Cooperative Federal program design team thought that their original idea of how to design and market the program made perfect sense. However, when they showed their concept board to clients and other staff, they found that what seemed clear to them was not at all clear to others. For example, their original tagline—“Some for You, Some for Me”—was intended to represent that money would be put into savings each time a loan payment was made. However, this was not intuitive to others. Instead, it detracted from the full explanation of the program on the board. Through multiple iterations of their concept board, the design team settled on a new tagline, “Be a Savings Superhero,” which was more attractive and didn’t confuse people about how the product works.

CONCEPT BOARDSMETHOD

Testing client and colleague reactions to the basic design of your program provides you with a sneak peak at how the program will be received —while you still have time to adjust.


Add an

extra $15 to your monthly

loan payment

and watch your

savings add up. Pay for now while you save for later.

BE A SAVINGS SUPERHERO

Save

Up!

Getting StartedCreating and testing a concept board that conveys the key elements of service can be a simple process. The key steps are:

1. Design your concept board. To develop a clear concept board, outline the critical information about your program that you need to convey to clients and stakeholders using the following three elements:

■ A tagline that grabs the attention of potential clients. ■ A value proposition that details, in one or two sentences, what the program is and how potential clients would

benefit from it.

■ The key features of the program distilled into 3-5 bullet points

Unless you have the time and resources, don’t worry about designing the board with professional graphics or layout. You’re looking for feedback on the idea and how it’s explained, not the way the board looks.

2. Test your concept board. Ask people to give you feedback on your concept board. Ideally, try to get feedback from clients or others like those you hope to serve. Present them with the concept board and have them to respond to a series of open-ended questions, such as:

■ What do you like about this service? ■ What questions do you have about the service? ■ What would you change?

Try “Save Simple”, a new program offered just for members with loans at Cooperative Federal. We’ll help you build a safety net to see you through life’s emergencies. *******************************************************************************

*** Try “Save Simple”, a new program offered to Cooperative Federal members to help build savings even while paying off loans. Here’s how it works: 1. Agree that you are worth saving $15 a month, just for you. 2. Sign up while signing on to a new loan. It takes 2 minutes. 3. We set up an automatic loan payment and savings contribution on the same day. 4. When you pay off your loan, you get paid in savings! Time passes, your loan shrinks and your savings increases! We can help you keep it out of sight and out of mind, so your savings grows faster and bigger. Save for emergencies, an important goal, or just a

rainy day!

Be your own savings superhero. and let us do the work.

tagline

value proposition

Solution

Cooperative Federal’s simple concept board was later used to create a more visually appealing flyer.


OverviewOnce you’ve tested your concept boards and finalized your program’s key design elements, you are ready to develop and test prototypes of your program materials. Prototyping is the process of sharing and receiving feedback on early drafts, samples or models of program materials. The idea of prototyping is similar to testing concept boards, except that in-stead of asking for feedback on the overall design of your program, you are obtaining input on specific materials, such as flyers and applications.

Prototyping generally takes multiple rounds, with each version of a material rapidly tested and refined according to feedback. Common prototypes for social service programs include:

■ Flyers or brochures

■ Forms or applications

■ Standard emails, letters or text messages

■ Instructions, directions or manuals

■ Websites or mobile apps

SILC participants identified several ways that prototyping was beneficial to their design process:

■ The quick process helped them avoid becoming too attached to materials that they ultimately had to reject because of negative feedback.

■ Over multiple rounds, they were able to simplify and clarify the language and visuals in their materials until they found a combination that strongly resonated with clients.

■ The end products were more successful in attracting clients for the programs than their original ideas.

Method in Action @ United Way for Greater AustinWhat they did: United Way for Greater Austin (UWATX) staff tested a prototype split direct deposit form, as well as email language describing the program to a client population similar to their own. The email language prototype was designed to intro-duce employees to the split direct deposit program and entice them to join an in-person meeting at their office to learn more.

PROTOTYPINGMETHOD

Testing the materials you’ll use in service delivery ensures you use messages that resonate with clients and that your program documents are clear and user-friendly.


Key Insight: Striking the right tone in program materials, such as emails and flyers, is tricky, and it can take several iterations to get it right. UWATX staff found the group reviewing the materials had great interest in the program but was dissuaded from learning more because of the initial emails about the program. Staff had used language that they felt would make the program exciting to potential participants, but instead the group thought the email felt too much like a sales pitch or possibly even a scam. Based on this feedback, UWATX made its messages more straightforward and direct. Through prototyping, they learned to let the program “sell” itself through clear information and details.

Getting StartedGeneral steps for a simple prototyping session include:

1. Develop a prototype or series of prototypes. These are drafts of materials you expect to use in your program.

2. Set up times for clients to participate in a prototyping session. As with interviews and concept boards, you should identify clients who are similar to your target population to review your prototypes.

3. Identify “tasks” for the sessions. Tasks are meant to mimic what you expect real clients to do with the material. If your prototype is a brochure, you might simply ask the client to read it. However, if you’re testing an application, the task would be to fill out the application.

4. Develop feedback prompts for session. You should have a few prompts to ask clients for feedback after they finish the tasks. Use open-ended questions or probing statements, such as:

■ “Tell me what you think of this.” ■ “Show me why this would (not) work for you.” ■ “Tell me more about how this made you feel.”

5. Conduct and document the session. Make sure to document observations about whether or not clients are success-fully completing the tasks for each prototype and their emotional state. When soliciting feedback, be sure to ask many “why” questions to get to the bottom of the client’s response. Keep detailed notes from the session.

6. Review and synthesize notes from the session. Look for patterns in the observations and feedback notes to deter-mine if additional changes need to be made to the prototype(s).

3 Article available at http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/prototyping.html.

4 Article available at http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/usability-testing.html.

For information on advanced prototyping, check out articles on “Prototyping”3 and “Usability Testing”4 from usability.gov.

People’s Community Action Corporation Prototype Flyer


CONCLUSIONThe Savings Innovation Learning Cluster has demonstrated the importance of taking clients’ experiences, attitudes and desires into account when designing savings programs. Doing so helps ensure that your services are needed, wanted and presented in a way that’s attractive to clients. These four human insights methods, if applied correctly, can help you avoid common problems that savings programs face. To learn more about SILC participants’ insights and savings program innovations, download A Scalability Analysis of Savings Programs.

spurring savings innovations - prosperity now · spurring savings innovation speaking to clients...

Documents