Service user experience
Our commitment to service user experience
Our aim is to create a high performing organisation which delivers a brilliant service for service users, partners, stakeholders and communities. Your feedback plays a vital role in shaping how we work. We use a range of approaches to understand and improve the service user experience, including:
• Collecting staff and service user feedback via surveys and research interviews
• Running panels made up of people who have been through an independent investigation or complaint review process
• Co-producing resources and solutions with service users to make improvements to how we work
• Working with groups and organisations who represent service users to improve our understanding of their experiences
Insights gained from these activities help us to identify what we are doing well and where we can improve our service.
Our approach to continuous improvement and quality
We use the following definition of quality to guide our work:
At the IOPC, we seek to provide an independent and accessible service to all users. We focus on transparency, consistency, and accuracy in everything we do. We treat you fairly and with empathy, using your feedback and experiences to drive improvements.
We worked with service users and our staff to create this definition so that it reflects the real experiences, expectations, and priorities of the people who use our services and the people who deliver them. The definition is supported by our eleven service standards, which set out how we will work with you and what you can expect from us.
As well as acting on your feedback, we also monitor the quality of our work. We do this by:
• Undertaking projects and internal audits so that we understand the quality of our work and can take steps to make improvements
• Identifying and sharing good practice across the organisation
• Monitoring performance against our standards
• Working with stakeholders and partners to understand good practice from other organisations and sectors
In 2024, we introduced a new quality governance structure, which led to a range of new measures including a Quality Improvement Cycle process for internal learning, a quarterly quality assurance dashboard and a definition of quality for the organisation.
From 2020 to 2025, we held the Customer Service Excellence accreditation. You can read more about our previous assessments on The National Archive.
We made the decision not to pursue a further cycle of this accreditation. We are grateful for the guidance and recommendations shared as part of the assessments and will continue to take these insights forward, alongside the learning we identify from feedback from our service users and the activities we undertake to monitor the quality of our work.