When we opened our Glasgow office, we wanted to start the right way. Not with a spotlight on ourselves but by making space to open up crucial conversations to the Glasgow digital and data community.

We invited people from across the city to an event focusing on a topic that really matters: vulnerable customers. A diverse group from government, financial services, SMEs, and global companies came together to explore how we can start asking better questions.A diverse group from government, financial services, SMEs and multinational corporations came together to discuss how we could all start asking better questions. About the services we use every day. About the assumptions they’re built on. And about the people who often get left out of them.

We called the evening Helping Humans: Identifying and protecting vulnerable customers with digital services.

Why Glasgow?

In 2024, Glasgow City Council set out its Digital Glasgow Strategy for the years ahead. The plan focuses on inclusive service delivery, the ethical use of data and giving everyone in the city the digital skills they need to thrive. It reflects a growing understanding that public services need to be built around real lives and real barriers, not just digital targets.

That work is part of a wider shift happening across Scotland. The ScotAccount system is now adding 9,000 verified digital identities each week, helping more people securely access services. It’s a step towards making digital identity something that works for everyone, not just those already well connected.

At the same time, Glasgow’s design and tech community continues to grow. From grassroots meetups to civic innovation labs, it’s a city where public service delivery is a shared conversation. People here care deeply about the systems that shape daily life and who gets left out of them.

That’s why we’re here — to listen, learn and contribute to the work already happening. Our first event took place within that conversation, giving people a chance to share what they’re seeing, where services are falling short and what might need to shift.

What we talked about and why it matters

The discussion was led by Hippo’s Chief Delivery Officer, Mike Tattersall, and featured Amy Paterson, a Product Manager at Alba Co Ltd and Mike Crockart, Service Owner at the Scottish Government. Each speaker brought a different perspective — from financial services to government policy — but what connected them was a shared focus on how systems work for the people using them.

Rather than define vulnerability in abstract terms they shared everyday examples: someone without formal ID; a person who doesn’t pass a credit check; a young person who navigates social media easily but struggles to apply for financial help. These weren’t outliers. They were reminders that people often fall through the gaps when services are designed for systems, rather than to meet situational needs.

The phrase “hard to reach” came up more than once. It’s a label that often shifts responsibility away from services and onto people. But as the panel pointed out, it’s rarely about unwillingness to engage. More often, it’s about the system not being set up to meet someone where they are. If a person doesn’t fit the mould a service expects, does that mean they are harder to reach? Or does that mean we’ve designed in a way that makes reaching them harder?

The conversation also surfaced bigger questions about how services are built and who they serve. What do we ask people to provide an ID, just to get help? What assumptions are baked into those asks? And are those assumptions based on real lives, or just what feels safe to the system?

Trust, identity and eligibility came up again and again. It raised a difficult but important point. When we make things easier for organisations but harder for people, who are we really designing for?

By the end of the evening, the focus had shifted. It wasn’t about identifying vulnerable users. It was about recognising the ways services can make people vulnerable, and the responsibility we all share to change that.

Making things work better

One thread that ran clearly through the evening was the gap between how we define success and what success looks like to the people using a service. It’s easy to focus on KPIs that satisfy internal expectations or compliance frameworks. But that doesn’t always mean the service is working. Sometimes, it just means it’s measurable.

This came through in a comparison shared during the panel on two approaches to identity verification. One used knowledge-based questions. It had a 24 percent success rate. The other used biometric verification. It had an 85 percent success rate. On paper, both methods aim to verify identity. But the outcomes couldn’t be more different. One introduces friction into the ID process, and the other increases access and confidence.

These design decisions often go unnoticed. But they’re the difference between someone completing a task or giving up. Between inclusion and exclusion.

It echoed a wider point raised in the discussion around how services are often shaped by organisational need rather than user context. People are often asked to prove their identity, eligibility or intent in ways that reflect what a system is comfortable asking, not what a person is realistically able to provide. If someone doesn’t have the right documents or language, the process becomes a barrier. It’s not that they’re unreachable. It’s that they’re being asked to access a service that wasn’t built with them in mind.

There was also caution around how AI and data may be used in services. The panel spoke about the risk of treating technology as an automatic fix. AI is good at recognising patterns, but human judgment is still essential, especially when dealing with people already in vulnerable situations. Used well, AI can support better outcomes. Used poorly, it can scale assumptions and make exclusion harder to spot.

And in a world where services are increasingly automated, the group questioned how we hold onto the human instinct behind good design. How do we create services that respond to nuance, not just data? How do we help organisations shift from compliance-driven delivery to outcome-led thinking?

The message was clear. Technology should never outpace understanding. If we want to build trust, we have to keep people in mind.

For now and for what’s next

As the conversation drew to a close, attention turned to a group that’s often missed out. Young people. The idea that digital confidence means digital inclusion came under quiet challenge. Just because someone knows how to use a smartphone doesn’t mean they can navigate a benefits application or set up secure access to a bank account.

It was a reminder that good services don’t just serve today’s users. They prepare for the people who will need them next. That includes young people growing up in a digital world that doesn’t always make space for learning curves or uneven access. If we want to design for the future, we need to start by thinking about who we’re not yet reaching.

For us, the evening wasn’t just a launch. It was a starting point. It shaped how we want to be part of the city. Not by arriving with answers but by making space for better questions.