Modernizing helpline services without losing the human touch
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Challenge
Debt Free Advice needed to reach the people that needed them most, those who would never walk into an advice centre, and meet them wherever their financial crisis was already unfolding.
Solution
Using Twilio Voice, Messaging, Flex, and Programmable Video, Debt Free Advice built a communications platform that followed clients into job centres, community libraries, hospital wards, and beyond. This allowed them to scale from 30 fragmented phone lines to a single, flexible infrastructure that handles thousands of conversations at once.
For most people, the moment they decide to get help with debt is not a calm one. It comes in the middle of the night when they can’t sleep. It’s the moment when a letter arrives with a court date, or in a hospital corridor when a cancer diagnosis lands alongside the realisation that the financial safety net they thought they had is full of holes.
Debt Free Advice was built on a simple belief: free, high-quality financial guidance should be available to everyone, not just those able to navigate a phone queue or find the right office on the right day. For twenty years, this partnership of UK charities has supported over half a million people through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
But the hardest people to help, those facing language barriers, disabilities, or social isolation, were also the least likely to make it through the door. The traditional model of face-to-face appointments, carrying a bag of unopened debt collection letters in hand, was still the reality. It just wasn’t working at the scale the need demanded.
So Debt Free Advice asked a different question. Instead of asking people to come to the advice, what if the advice came to them?
That question, first posed in the chaos of a global pandemic, became the foundation of a technology partnership with Twilio that has since transformed how Debt Free Advice operates. Now it’s unlocking some of the most inaccessible communities in the country.
Rebuilding communications overnight
When the UK entered lockdown in March 2020, Debt Free Advice faced a specific and urgent problem. Its 30-plus London advice centres—each with its own phone number, its own team, its own way of working—suddenly couldn’t open their doors. Demand for debt support was surging as the pandemic triggered sudden job losses, furloughs, and instant financial shocks across the UK. The infrastructure to handle it remotely did not exist.
Debt Free Advice turned to Twilio. Within weeks, the organisation had replaced its fragmented telephone-based operation with a single London number, intelligently routing calls to available advisors working from home. The shift that might have taken years in normal circumstances happened in a matter of days.
In one 90-day window, the new Twilio-powered platform handled over 15,000 distinct client conversations. That kind of volume that would have been operationally impossible under the old setup. Financial advisors who had never worked remotely were now seamlessly matching with clients across the city. No one fell through the gap simply because their local centre was closed.
"We came to Twilio needing one phone number for London. What we built became the foundation for everything that followed."
The video channel came next. Debt Free Advice worked with a technology partner to build a browser-based video advice tool on top of the Twilio stack—no app download required, no complicated sign-up. Clients could see their advisor face to face from their living room. In the first few months, over 6,000 people used it. For a client base that often struggled with technology, its simplicity was the point.
The kiosk idea
As lockdowns lifted, the Debt Free Advice team looked at what the pandemic had taught them: the video channel worked and the unified phone infrastructure worked. And the research was clear: it typically takes more than 30 nudges before someone in financial difficulty takes that first step toward advice. Every bit of friction that could be taken out of the process mattered.
The insight that changed everything came from looking at Debt Free Advice’s outreach work. At job centres, libraries, and housing offices across London, trusted support workers like job coaches, case managers, and housing officers were already sitting across the table from people who were struggling financially. But the best they could do was hand over a leaflet. The debt advisor was somewhere else, and the moment passed.
Debt Free Advice took the Twilio-powered video stack and turned it into a physical kiosk. The proposition was simple: if a job coach spotted that a client was worried about rent arrears, they could walk them to the kiosk, press the green button, and within minutes be introducing them to a live debt advisor. That meant there was no waiting for an appointment, no waiting two weeks, and no static leaflet. Just the right help at the moment.
By 2022, the first kiosks went live. Today, more than 40 Video Advice Kiosks operate across London, spanning job centres, community hubs, and secure prison environments. In prisons especially, they bridge a stark digital divide, supporting people to address financial issues prior to release as part of wider resettlement support. Each kiosk enables clients to connect directly with a qualified debt adviser over video, eliminating the need to travel or wait for a traditional in-person appointment. Powered by Twilio, the system seamlessly manages voice, video, SMS, and WhatsApp to meet clients on their preferred channels. Backed by a team fluent in 33 languages, the platform stands ready to assist at a moment's notice.
Same infrastructure, new lifelines
June 2026 marks Debt Free Advice’s twentieth anniversary and this milestone isn't just a moment to celebrate the past, it’s a moment to announce what comes next. Debt Free Advice launched MacMillan, Money & More in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support, extending free debt advice to people affected by cancer across London, including bedside video access in hospital settings.
The proposition is straightforward but profound: a cancer patient, already navigating one of the most frightening experiences of their life, often discovers simultaneously that their diagnosis has financial consequences for which they weren’t prepared. Benefits they’re entitled to go unclaimed. Debts they could resolve, go unaddressed. Debt Free Advice’s bedside video access connects people directly with advice at the moment the need is highest.
The Twilio infrastructure underneath is the same. The browser-based video experience is the same. What changes is the setting and the community it serves.
"We're launching Macmillan Money and More, and giving access to people who need financial advice who have had their lives affected by cancer. Bringing a service direct to people using technology will make it so that more people can receive this support and focus on what they need to focus on, which is their own health, wellbeing, and recovery journey."
Looking ahead, Debt Free Advice is also exploring AI-powered translation to extend the reach of its 33-language advisory team even further, as well as AI transcription and summarisation of advice sessions. The goal is to allow clients to revisit their guidance as a set of clear, actionable steps rather than a memory of an emotionally charged appointment.
What began as a rapid three-week pandemic sprint by Debt Free Advice has become a highly scalable communication infrastructure. Full omnichannel features let clients move seamlessly from community kiosks to phone calls and text updates. The technology now enables Debt Free Advice to manage more than 15,000 conversations in a single quarter without opening new physical offices—ensuring this next chapter of debt advice reaches communities that previously lacked access to these lifelines.
