2.16 Moving millions of customers from a familiar system of order books and girocheques to a new system based on Card technology was a major area of business risk for the Department. They had to ensure that the new arrangements would be acceptable to benefits claimants.
2.17 The purchasers managed this area of risk from the earliest stages of the project. Customer acceptance was one of the criteria taken into account in their joint feasibility report in February 1994, where for example the security features of the Payment Card were considered more acceptable than fingerprint reading.
2.18 During procurement in 1995, customer acceptability was an important stream of the purchasers' evaluation of bidders' proposals. Each bidder's proposals in this area were acceptable: in the case of Pathway it was one of the stronger elements of their bid. Post Office Counters Ltd also obtained market research into the acceptability of the Card at this time, which established that most claimants felt they would adapt easily to the new system. Younger claimants and girocheque recipients were particularly in favour of the change.
2.19 The purchasers and Pathway also undertook customer research in November and December 1996, as soon as possible after the introduction of the initial limited versions of the Benefits Payment Card system in the first ten post offices to be automated. The customers, at this stage for Child Benefit only, felt the change to be generally positive. The later roll-out to 200 post offices confirmed that the system was acceptable to customers.
2.20 Customer acceptance had to be balanced against the extent of complexity this required in the new system. The customer survey in October 1995 showed that claimants wanted to retain the ability to draw cash from Post Offices other than their own and to have a nominated Agent collect their benefit for them. These later proved to be areas of difficulty in developing the system, as shown in the next section of our report.