Chapter 6
Lessons Learned
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Through this project, ideas42 learned a great deal from our Credit Counseling Agency (CCA) partners and from Debt Management Plan (DMP) clients, generating valuable inputs for ongoing work in this field. Below, we detail some of the main lessons learned through this initiative, which can help guide organizations seeking to provide better debt support to consumers.
Over the course of the engagement, some of our partner CCAs merged with other agencies, migrated their DMP clients to other organizations, or changed staffing. Continual iteration was therefore crucial to ensure that the interventions we designed continued to speak to the realities of each agency. Flexibility is key: Several times we went back to the drawing board to question and reconfirm our hypotheses, collect staff and user feedback, or adapt timelines, channels, and testing plans.
Finally, we partnered with a New Jersey–based credit counseling agency to test the interventions with DMP clients who had missed a payment between March 4 and April 5, 2024.
Working across cohorts of CCAs helped us ensure that our work spoke to the needs of a wide range of organizations. In addition to our close engagement with implementation partners, we also convened a number of CCAs into a “Scaling Insights group” that was consulted at key moments to validate insights and ensure industry relevance. This approach allowed us to adapt to agencies’ varying levels of resources while still ensuring that the findings were applicable to a range of organizations.
Planning fallacy is a principle in behavioral science that tells us that people tend to underestimate the time, money, and risks required to complete a project or task. Even as experts in behavioral science, we are susceptible to these biases! We observed them both within our team and with partners in diverse ways: overconfidence in implementation power, under budgeting time, etc.
After recognizing this reality, we mitigated these risks by visualizing the process, laying out detailed steps, and building buffers into work plans and timelines. We were also open to identifying alternatives when necessary. For example, both our team and one of our partner CCAs originally anticipated greater agility with their technology systems to customize interventions and track data. However, upon more closely fleshing out the process and involving the relevant departments, we found that certain forms of customization would be much more difficult and that data tracking would be manual and time consuming. Through open feedback, flexibility, and close collaboration, we refined the designs to require less customization and adapted our schedule to more closely resemble the pace of work on both ends. We are grateful for the transparency and commitment from our partner, who worked with us to ensure that implementation was a success.
The project reaffirmed the important service that Credit Counseling Agencies (CCAs) and Debt Management Plans (DMPs) provide in helping clients overcome burdensome debt. It also highlighted the depth and complexity of challenges that these clients are facing in their daily lives.
From understanding the impact of scarcity, to hassles that prevent follow-through, to stigma and shame that lead people to hide, behavioral science can help us understand the realities faced by people struggling with debt and the barriers they face on a day-to-day basis. More importantly, it points toward opportunities to reduce these barriers, so more individuals can access programs and support that can provide relief. We’re grateful for the opportunity to apply behavioral learnings to DMPs and for the partnership of so many CCAs, employees, and clients along this journey, and look forward to continued innovation to better meet the needs of millions of people across America.
We welcome your thoughts on the tools, barriers, and insights shared in this report, and we’d love to explore opportunities for partnership. Please reach out to us at FinancialHealth@ideas42.org.