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If the GOV.UK website could helpfully chat with you, what would that experience be like?

If the GOV.UK website could helpfully chat with you, what would that experience be like?

HMRC Conversational user interface (CUI) service assessment

Helping HMRC deliver a trustworthy conversational user experience to provide 24/7 support to millions of citizens navigating furlough schemes, grants, and new tax implications without overwhelming helplines.

Challenge

The service needed to be as trustworthy and clear as GOV.UK itself, offering consistent, distraction-free guidance to users while adapting to the unique requirements of conversational interfaces.

A user journey example on a mobile device
It was important for us to understand if the user's problem could be solved while in a mobile context. I leveraged the GOV.UK design system's mobile-first responsive templates to integrate the conversational UI.

My brief was twofold:

  • Backstage: Figure out how to adapt backstage processes and technology to create a robust, scalable, and trustworthy chat experience.
  • Frontstage: Explore what it would mean from a front-end perspective “if the GOV.UK website itself could chat with visitors” reflecting its clarity and reliability in a conversational format.

Approach

I began by aligning cross-functional teams, including content designers, developers, and policy experts, to define the chatbot’s purpose and scope. Inspired by GOV.UK’s no-distractions service ethos, we focused on delivering precise, relevant responses to user queries while reducing “dead ends” in the chat flow.

Key steps included:

  • Starting with user needs: Collaborating with researchers to understand common user pain points. Insights from user research shaped every design decision.
  • Backstage innovation: Simplifying integration with both HMRC and govuk’s existing content management infrastructure to ensure chat responses remained accurate and up to date.
  • Iterative design and testing: Prototyping both the govuk-inspired IxD and the conversational flows and testing them with users to ensure clarity and utility.
An option from a multivariate test shows a sample of govuk content in the chat UI itself.
I designed multivariate tests to explore to what degree users expected the chat UI to provide the answer in inline content as opposed to providing links to GOV.UK pages.

Outcomes

  • 24/7 assistance: Delivered a chatbot capable of handling a significant volume of inquiries, reducing strain on helplines.
  • Trust and satisfaction: Users described the experience as clear and dependable, echoing GOV.UK’s tone of voice.
  • Efficiency gains: The chatbot saved HMRC an estimated £5 million in support costs and paved the way for further adoption of conversational UIs across government services.

Impact

The HMRC chatbot project demonstrated the value of combining human-centred design with robust backstage processes. By embedding GOV.UK’s design principles and values into a conversational experience, we were able to deliver immediate operational benefits.

The view from the research team

Read Ruth Drake’s great blog post on designing helpful chatbots

Can I help you solve a similar problem? dug@goodlookslikethis.com

Tags: Nuance, intent, GOV.UK, remote work, chatbot, enterprise software, user research, service management