An introduction to our research on the new ‘Register with CQC’ service

Rose Edmands and Kelly Garlick, The Care Quality Commission.

Like other organisations, being a User Researcher in government has its challenges. Despite that, here at CQC we are all about putting the user needs at the forefront of the services we’re designing and looking at ways we can improve the services available to users.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll be doing a series of blog posts to update you on our progress so you can follow what we get up to on the Registration Transformation team. For this first blog, we’re going to introduce the service we’re working on, what we’ve done so far and what we’re discovering.

Register with CQC

At the moment, we’re working on the registration transformation project at CQC. ‘Register with CQC’ does what it says on the tin, it’s a project that will allow prospective providers of health and social care in England apply to register with us.

Back in spring (April 2020), we launched our Private Beta phase to allow users to register and deliver services like domiciliary care via a new online application. The private beta phase is where we release our new service to a select criteria of users to see how they get on, we’re then able to continue to do user research and iterate the service before we open it up to a wider audience (known as the public beta phase).

Who are our users?

Our main user group is people who are looking to Register with CQC, who want to deliver a form on health and/or social care service that CQC would regulate. This group includes users who have or will be using our private beta service.

So, what research are we doing?

We’ve been conducting user research with our private beta users through various methods to obtain their feedback and understand what is working well, but more importantly understand what we haven’t quite got right yet. We’ve done qualitative follow up calls, surveys, diary studies and analysed analytics from a software called Hotjar, as well as working closely with our performance analyst, Martin McDowall.

To gain access to our users, we’ve been contacting those who have filled out a survey either before or after they have submitted their application. However, the response rate wasn’t too high so alongside this, the staff on the phones who help get users set up have been asking users if they’d like to take part in our research. This has resulted in more volunteers where we can follow up and present various options to users to see if and how they’d like to participate.

What have we learnt?

So far, the feedback has been largely positive and users have been either very satisfied or satisfied with their experience of the service and online application. As usual, our research has highlighted a couple of themes that may need amending and iterating to make the service an even smoother user experience. One of the common themes has been around how we communicate with users if their application is returned to them and requires some amendments. Some users have explained that the email communication they receive around what needs amending in their application is difficult to understand and interpret. Based on this feedback, we’re looking into what communication users are receiving when their application is returned, to see if it’s consistent across all users and if there are any changes that may need to be made to the email content and layout.

By making changes based on user feedback, we are putting their needs first and at the heart of development. As a team, we will continue to work together to prioritise any changes that need to be made to the service as a result of our users’ feedback.

What next?

The next few weeks will be busy for the Register with CQC User Research team (as always!) as we refine the service based on the themes and feedback from our users. We have also recently been focusing on the accessibility of our service and have been conducting remote research sessions with internal colleagues who have reasonable adjustments in place or use an assistive technology. We will touch upon the methods used and findings from our accessibility sessions in one of our next blogs.