Your Experience Matters

The National Archives (NARA) provides a broad range of services to internal and external customers, including researchers, visitors, educators, genealogists, students, veterans, information technologists, federal agencies and more. 

Our records are critical to the American public, but our work to preserve and provide access to the permanent records of the federal government is only effective if we provide you with a good customer experience. Many people think of our iconic research room in Washington D.C. when they think about contacting the National Archives. But the truth is that as the Agency has focused on our strategic goal to Connect with Customers, we provide many paths into the Archives.

Our staff are working together to understand and improve your journey with us, which may start with an email, a phone call, or an online search. You may ask a question on History Hub or download copies of our records from our online Catalog. And as the country slowly reawakens from pandemic times, you may visit one of our Presidential Libraries or research rooms across the country. We know that many of you perform a combination of these tasks and more in the course of working with the Archives. There are so many ways to interact with our agency, and we want to make sure that regardless of the ways you come to NARA, we will support your needs. 

In fact, your experience with NARA is one of my highest priorities. It is embedded into the mission of the agency and our strategic goal to connect with customers. I hired the National Archives’ first Chief Customer Experience Officer, Stephanie Bogan, to help us focus as an agency on your experience. I also deputized the Agency’s Management Team to become our Customer Experience Executive Council in order to make customer-focused decisions for the Agency and move us forward.

We recently conducted an enterprise-wide assessment to understand: 

• the agency’s ability to listen to and learn from our internal and external customers
•  the extent to which we evaluate our service from the customer’s perspective
• and most importantly our capacity to act on what we learn

We have identified numerous opportunities to grow. We are now in the process of translating those opportunities into actions aimed at deepening our understanding of you, our customers. With leadership from the top, we are evaluating qualitative and quantitative market research, cultivating and supporting an organizational culture of service excellence, and identifying ways to modernize our operations to improve our service delivery from your perspective.