HMRC Trader Support Service alpha service assessment report

Trader Support Service (TSS) is an established, free-to-use government service that supports traders and carriers moving goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, helping them to meet the requirements of the Windsor Framework, previously known as the Northern Ireland Protocol arrangements. 

The service underpins most freight movements between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and to a lesser extent between Northern Ireland and Great Britain and is critical to maintaining compliant trade flows.  

The next iteration of TSS is built on a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution, ERMIS, which is a flexible and configurable platform and aims to improve known problems for users, compliance, and HMRC including: 

reducing cost by improving front end and reducing the strain on contact centre support 

Micro, Small, Medium and Large traders (importers and exporters) 

The Trader Support Service team outlined a carefully considered architecture composed of appropriate, widely deployed technologies, extending the chosen COTS product with bespoke frontend applications to meet the needs of their users. 

The Performance Analyst demonstrated how data will be generated and how this information will be used to iterate the service, based on insights gathered from customer and user interactions with the service.  

The service team has plans in place to ensure that user research directly informs the key performance indicators, providing assurance that user needs are being met and that user research effectively complements and supports the Traders Support Service metrics. 

The team took a considered approach to naming the service, using user research to align terminology with users’ mental models. Updates to the design to align with GDS standards and improvements in the content show clear intent to reduce cognitive load and improve clarity.