Making federal student loans personal for 40M borrowers.

Bringing world-class customer experience to government

Wendy Bhagat remembers the day in March 2020 when her boss told her to turn on the TV for an announcement from the White House. Bhagat is the director of product marketing and delivery at Federal Student Aid (FSA), and when she learned student loan payments would be suspended effective immediately due to the coronavirus pandemic, she knew that her team would need to jump into action to communicate with more than 40 million customers.

That was the start of a wild, three-year ride for Bhagat and FSA that involved multiple extensions to the payment freeze. With each extension and change, Bhagat and her team needed to reach borrowers with up-to-date information about what it meant for them and their finances. They succeeded with strategy, teamwork, and something not always associated with government agencies — an obsession with customer experience.

As part of the U.S. Department of Education, FSA provides more than $115 billion in aid each year in the form of loans, grants, and work-study funds. The agency forms long-term relationships with customers that can span decades, beginning when they first consider higher education and continuing through graduation, first jobs, successful loan repayment, and loan forgiveness.

With so many touchpoints, the process is inherently complex — and it can be confusing and emotional. Beginning in 2018, Bhagat’s team worked with Accenture Federal Services to customize and streamline communications to make student loan information clearer and more accessible for dozens of customer segments.

Just months before the coronavirus pandemic threw its operations into overdrive in March 2020, Accenture implemented Adobe Campaign, leveraging AWS GovCloud, as part of FSA’s new comprehensive customer communications strategy. The new approach enabled FSA to respond quickly, sending more than 190 million emails in just nine months with customized information to help borrowers understand their loan status.

“We have heard from our customers that getting and managing student loans can feel overwhelming,” Bhagat says. “We’re helping fund people’s educational dreams, but how do we keep them engaged at different stages of their journey and inform them of the options available to them? We want to make things as simple as possible for our customers. Our goal is providing a world-class customer experience.”

A game-changer at a critical moment

When Bhagat’s team began its overhaul of communications, FSA had multiple websites and phone numbers serving an assortment of needs. FSA and Accenture reconceptualized these needs as a single customer journey, enabling them to consolidate down to one website (StudentAid.gov) and one phone number (1-800-4-FED-AID).

Next, they tackled email communications, which were sent from FSA as well as contracted servicers assigned to manage loans on FSA’s behalf.

“We had multiple platforms sending out emails with a different look, feel, and writing style,” Bhagat says. “No one knew, were these all official emails? Were they all coming from FSA? Is this a scam?”

The team aligned all communications to reflect FSA’s new brand and style, using StudentAid.gov as the source of truth to empower loan servicers to send their own communications to borrowers. Accenture employed Adobe Campaign as the centralized platform for email communication that allowed the team to segment audiences and create engaging email designs that reflected the new FSA branding and adhered to their content strategy.

The entire process took less than two years, with the first email sent from Adobe Campaign in December 2019 — and not a moment too soon. Just three months later, when the CARES Act suspended federal student loan payments with 0% interest for all U.S. Department of Education-held loans, the agency was ready to act.

FSA gathered stakeholders, including policy experts, content creators, UX experts, and communication channel owners, to create a cohesive, rapid communications plan using a human-centered design approach.

The group mapped individual customer journeys and messaging, sending targeted emails and text messages to customers at various stages of their journey, followed by social media, paid media, and paid search efforts with the same information.

“The opportunity to communicate directly with customers via email and text was a game-changer for us at a critical moment in time for the country and the world that we needed to execute on,” says Bhagat. The result was a remarkable open rate of more than 50% for FSA emails and an acceleration of plans for segmenting audiences.

“We sent over 190 million emails between July 2020 and April 2021,” Bhagat says. “We didn’t think we’d get to that volume until 2022, but suddenly we had to jump into high gear and send email communications to 40 million people. And we had to have the right segmentation for those emails — for students in school, students who just graduated, individuals that may have been delinquent on their loan payments — and give them as much specific information as we could.” As of March 2024, FSA has sent over 2.3 billion emails to its customers.

A steady stream of changes

FSA’s ability to customize content and segment audiences was crucial for keeping up with the steady stream of changes to student loan policy during the pandemic.

“We couldn’t have done it without the ability to run multiple parallel campaigns,” Bhagat says. “We had emails going out to our customers, our partners, community-based organizations or college access organizations, schools. We had to have a lot of campaigns running at the same time.”

FSA’s audience segmentation can be as fine-grained as students at a single university, high school students filling out their first Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form, parents, or borrowers in midlife paying off their loans. The website syncs with Adobe Campaign to trigger confirmation emails for customer actions, often complete with customized information such as a summary of what was submitted as part of their financial aid application.

Emails are also highly personalized with dynamic information based on things like the customer’s name, loan type, servicer, or previous user actions. Some borrowers may have had their loans forgiven or qualified for an income-driven repayment plan, and FSA is constantly optimizing to reach the right customers at the right time with the right message. Because FSA can segment their borrowers according to what type of financial aid they received, other federal agencies have turned to them for help emailing customers about other services they might be eligible for, such as free internet access or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

FSA relies on customer feedback to optimize emails, which they gather from research tools, user research groups, and focused A/B testing of subject lines and email layouts. It’s all part of ensuring they don’t lose touch with customers and their needs.

“We don’t want to become an isolated government agency deciding what people need to know,” Bhagat says. “We’re in this fortunate position where people are coming to our website, they’re opening our emails at a high rate, so how do we keep that going? It’s exciting.”

Elevating customer experiences

FSA continues to improve customer journeys by collecting qualitative and quantitative customer feedback in an ongoing learning cycle. Through A/B testing, user surveys, and focus groups, the agency maintains a relentless focus on providing exceptional customer experiences.

FSA’s next goal is to increase their rate of SMS outreach, especially to new borrowers. They’re blazing a trail for other government agencies that are watching to see what they can learn from FSA’s powerful ability to reach specific audience segments.

“Adobe Campaign is a platform we’ve been able to continue to build on,” says Alexandra Tharrington, senior manager at Accenture Federal Services.

Through all the changes of the last four years, a world-class customer experience has remained the North Star for Bhagat’s team.

“It truly is a lifetime journey of 20 years or so,” says Bhagat. “Our goal is to stay connected with our customers throughout that journey and make sure they know all the tools and resources available to them, so repayment isn’t scary or surprising. We’re with them every step of the way.”

Learn more about how Adobe Campaign creates personalized cross-channel campaigns that meet customers where they’re at.