Sovereign · Housing
10 hours a week back in their pockets
How Sovereign freed 10 hours a week from manual tagging and made Wordnerds an integral part of root-cause analysis for 130,000 residents.
← All customer stories
Grainger: from “I think” to “I know”
Grainger's leaders had built a successful business on instinct. Its Director of Customer Experience used Wordnerds to show them what renters were really saying, and now they check their instinct against it.
Last updated 9 November 2026
Watch the webinar
Watch Jenny tell the story
Jenny Jeffcoat on the Wordnerds webinar From Insight to Influence, with the full transcript.
At a glance
- Grainger plc, the UK's largest listed residential landlord
- A Wordnerds customer since 2024
- Told by Jenny Jeffcoat, Director of Customer Experience
- Leaders now check their instinct against what renters say
The challenge
A successful business that ran on instinct
Jenny Jeffcoat joined Grainger as Director of Customer Experience from M&S and P&O Ferries. She was new to the role and new to the property industry, and she was joining a business that was already very successful.
That success had been built on experience and gut feel. But customer satisfaction had stopped moving, and nobody could explain why. Decisions about customers tended to go to the loudest voice in the room. The retention team wanted to keep renters for longer, while the lettings team wanted homes back to re-let at higher rents, and there was no evidence to settle it. Grainger surveyed customers at five touchpoints, chosen the same way, and nobody was properly analysing what customers actually wrote.
Jenny could see the business needed to move past basic satisfaction scores to the real customer voice. As the newcomer, though, she was making that case on her own. Her aim was to make a successful business even better, by taking its leaders from saying “I think” to “I know”.
Hearing what renters were really saying
Jenny started with the feedback Grainger already had, from touchpoint surveys, social media and the annual NPS survey, and let Wordnerds show her what renters were saying.
-
Days
A proof of concept
Within days, a Wordnerds proof of concept on Grainger's existing feedback gave Jenny a detailed picture of what renters were really saying, including the root causes and how strongly they felt. Wordnerds measured sentiment, so she could see not just how often something came up, but how much feeling was behind it.
-
Under a month
Nine stages, drawn from what renters wrote
Grainger only surveyed renters at five points in their journey, the ones whoever argued hardest thought mattered most. But in their comments, renters talked about every part of renting, so Jenny's team used their own words to redraw the journey as nine stages, each matching a team that owns it. Working with Grainger's new insight manager and Nat, their customer success manager at Wordnerds, the first playback was ready in under a month, without a single new survey.
-
Seven weeks
Live in Power BI
By mid-September the full view was live in Power BI, with each of the nine stages breaking down into more detailed ones for anyone who wanted to dig in.
Forty leaders predicted they were brilliant at all nine stages
Grainger's top 40 leaders meet once a year at a strategy day called the Hampshire Group. Jenny had a slot at the end of a long day of five-year plans and finance slides, and she brought flip charts and pens. She called the session Instinct to Insight, not customer experience, so it didn't sound like one department's project.
She sent a pre-read beforehand explaining how the Wordnerds analysis worked, so any questions about the method were answered before anyone saw a score.
On the day, she asked the leaders to walk the rental journey with her, stage by stage, predict how customers felt at each one, and say what they'd do about it. They predicted Grainger was brilliant at all nine. After a break for coffee and cake, she showed them the real Wordnerds sentiment scores. Where leaders had been right, they now knew why. Where they hadn't, the room wanted to know what was different.
Jenny kept the evidence in front of leaders after the workshop
A good afternoon can easily fade into polite nodding and no action. So Jenny built the evidence into how Grainger works.
-
A journey map that stays live
The nine-stage map lives in Power BI and updates as new reviews and survey results arrive, so the leaders who backed a change can see whether it's working.
-
A strategy the whole business owns
Jenny dropped the word “experience” from Grainger's customer experience strategy. It's now the customer strategy, so the whole business owns it.
-
Customers' words set the bar
A programme delivery manager holds each improvement project to success criteria written in customers' own words, taken from the Wordnerds verbatim.
What changed
“Actually, no, I know”
Grainger now treats the Wordnerds sentiment score, not NPS, as its foundational customer measure. Its top 40 leaders predicted how renters felt across a nine-stage journey, then saw the real scores. Leaders now ask Jenny Jeffcoat's team whether their instinct is right, and the chief executive answers questions about customers with “I know”.
Jenny saw how far things had moved at an all-hands meeting. Grainger's chief executive was asked how customer expectations had changed over the years. She started with “Well, I think,” then stopped. “Actually, no, I know,” she said, and talked through Grainger's nine service commitments and how opinions on repairs and maintenance had shifted.
Grainger's leaders now see the customer experience team as a trusted adviser, and Jenny keeps it that way by never bending the data to prove a point. She kept the list of fixes the leaders suggested on the day, to revisit with them.
Jenny has also watched Grainger's Net Promoter Score rise since the business invested in customer experience. Her advice for any organisation is to map customer feedback to a framework its leaders already use, and the score will take care of itself.
About Grainger
Founded in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1912, Grainger plc is the UK's largest listed residential landlord and a FTSE 250 company. It owns and manages over 11,200 rental homes for more than 25,000 customers, in cities across the UK from Newcastle to London.
All of Grainger's homes are managed by its own in-house team.
About Wordnerds
Wordnerds turns what customers say into what organisations do. We ingest feedback from surveys, complaints, reviews, calls and social; apply transparent, explainable AI to surface themes and drivers; and serve the insight two ways from one semantic model: full-detail Power BI for analysts, plain-language AI-chat answers for everyone else. Built for UK housing associations, transport operators and regulated sectors that need auditable evidence, not a black box.
Questions CX leaders ask
How do you get senior leaders to trust customer feedback over their own experience?
At Grainger, Jenny Jeffcoat let leaders predict first. At the annual strategy day, Grainger's top 40 leaders estimated customer sentiment at each of nine journey stages, then saw the real Wordnerds sentiment scores. Comparing their predictions with what customers actually said made the room curious, and leaders now ask her team whether their instinct is right.
Do you need new surveys to map the customer journey?
No. Grainger built its nine-stage customer journey from feedback it already had, from touchpoint surveys, social media and its annual NPS survey, analysed with Wordnerds. Customers' own words gave Grainger nine journey stages, each owned by an accountable team.
Why would a business use a sentiment score as its main customer measure?
A sentiment score built from what customers write shows how strongly they feel at each stage of their journey, as well as how often they raise something. Grainger moved “past basic satisfaction scores to real customer voice” and now treats the Wordnerds sentiment score as its foundational customer measure, tracked live in Power BI.
How do you stop a customer insight workshop turning into an argument about the data?
Share the method before the meeting. Jenny Jeffcoat, Grainger's Director of Customer Experience, sent leaders a pre-read explaining how the Wordnerds analysis worked before the strategy day. Questions about the method were answered in advance, so the session could focus on what customers were saying.
More customer stories
Sovereign · Housing
10 hours a week back in their pockets
How Sovereign freed 10 hours a week from manual tagging and made Wordnerds an integral part of root-cause analysis for 130,000 residents.
The Guinness Partnership · Housing
Predictive insights from ivy to damp and mould
How The Guinness Partnership turned informal comments about plants into data-driven evidence of damp and mould risk — and moved towards predictive insight.
Raven · Housing
From data overload to driving change
How Raven Housing Trust stopped drowning in spreadsheets and spent its time driving tangible improvements from tenant feedback instead.
