Since May, we’ve been asking people who have completed our test if they would take a short survey on their experience. Talking to people about their experiences of the service has been integral to its development, but this is the first time we’ve sought mass quantitative feedback. Here’s what you told us...

All of this is great, and of course, we’re really chuffed about it. Scoring greater than 4 out of 5 stars in all categories means people are on the most part, having an excellent experience of our service. It would be wrong, however, to see this as our job done. There are still people having less than perfect experiences and this gives us an opportunity to learn and improve, in the same way we have earlier in service development.

Room for improvement

We gave people free text fields to comment on different aspects of their answers and then categorised the constructive feedback by theme.

Overwhelmingly, the blood test came up as the bit people are the least keen on. It’s something we’ve always known can be sticky, and have already taken measures to improve (such as choosing a different lancet, and producing an instructional video) and we’ll keep going. We’re about to redesign our instructions, video and packaging. We have also just made it possible for people using the service in Essex to choose which tests they want to take. Testing for chlamydia and gonorrhoea only means you don’t need a blood test. We could roll this out to other areas in time.

While people were in the most part satisfied with the information they received, some people said that more information would help. The revised instructions we mentioned can help with this, however, people can always text us with any questions they have or take a look around the website where we have comprehensive FAQs about our test and information on sexual health and STIs.

You also told us we could advertise ourselves more. This has been tricky, as we have been delivering as much as we’re commissioned to in a few of our areas. We now have quotas in place that mean that in some areas once a certain number of tests are reached, the service will close for the day. This gives us a bit more space to tell people about the service, but we need to be able to manage expectations around availability. Find out more about this in our post: How budget cuts are affecting our ability to deliver online STI testing services

The really good stuff

Some people used the opportunity to tell us they were really, really happy with the service:

“I love you”

While others shared some great tips for doing the blood test:

“The blood test is tricky. My tip is to do exercise beforehand, like cycling home from work”

And when we made a word cloud of everything you said, it was great to see what we’d set out to achieve with the service reflected in your words:

We will continue to take regular snapshots of our feedback scores - any movement in the wrong direction will tell us what we need to work on. If you have any feedback about SH:24 we’d love to hear it - you can connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or email on info@sh24.org.uk. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter - just submit your email address in the box below.