Avanti West Coast · Transport
From Excel sheets to feedback the frontline reads
How Avanti West Coast's Voice of Customer team stopped sorting passenger comments by hand, and now shares what passengers loved, and who they named, with staff each period.
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Greater Anglia: tables, toilets and the case for change
Neil Atkin's customer experience team at Greater Anglia had tens of thousands of comments, and no way to tie them to the passenger journey. Wordnerds mapped the feedback to every stage of the trip, and the team used what it found to make the case for new tables on its trains and a different approach to onboard cleaning.
Last updated 13 November 2026
At a glance
- Greater Anglia, one of the UK's busiest rail operators
- Customer since 2023
- Told by Neil Atkin, Head of CX
- Tables installed and onboard cleaning teams redeployed
The challenge
Greater Anglia had tens of thousands of comments, and couldn't tie them to the journey
Neil Atkin is Head of CX at Greater Anglia, one of the UK's busiest rail operators. His customer experience and insights team is responsible for making sure passengers have a good journey, which means making sense of what they say every day.
Tens of thousands of verbatim comments arrived from surveys, social media and review channels. Greater Anglia used Qualtrics to collect its surveys, but there was far too much feedback for the team to analyse by hand, and the insight it could get wasn't specific enough to act on.
The bigger problem was the journey. A rail trip has many stages, and the team couldn't relate the feedback to any of them, so it couldn't pinpoint where passengers were happy and where they hit friction, or measure the true impact of the changes it was already making.
How they did it
To find what was worth fixing, Greater Anglia had Wordnerds map every comment to the journey
Greater Anglia needed something it could set up quickly, without getting in the way of the team's day-to-day work.
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Worked with the systems they had
Wordnerds fitted into Greater Anglia's existing tech stack, so there was little disruption and the team could get straight into its historical feedback.
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Built a framework around the journey
Wordnerds and Greater Anglia created a feedback framework based on Greater Anglia's own customer journey, so every comment is tied to a stage of the trip.
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Tracked sentiment at each stage
Wordnerds measures how passengers feel at each point of the journey over time, and picks out the specific issues the CX team can control.
Beyond punctuality, passengers were writing about toilets and tables
Neil's team already knew that trains arriving on time was a key driver of satisfaction. What it needed was the other, more specific issues affecting passengers, and with the feedback mapped to the journey, Wordnerds could show them.
On board, two stood out. Passengers cared how clean the toilets were, and whether they had a table to work on. Both affected satisfaction, and both were things Neil's team could do something about.
What they do now
Greater Anglia invested where the feedback pointed, then checked it worked
The specific insight gave the team the case for focused investment and action.
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Tables installed on the trains
The insight supported the case for installing tables on Greater Anglia's trains.
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Cleaning teams redeployed
It also changed how Greater Anglia deploys its onboard cleaning teams.
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Sentiment tracked afterwards
The team measures sentiment at each stage over time, so it can see whether its actions are working and put its resources in the right place.
What changed
Greater Anglia's passengers now feel better about life on board
Wordnerds mapped Greater Anglia's passenger feedback to each stage of the rail journey and found that, beyond punctuality, toilet cleanliness and having a table to work on affected satisfaction. Greater Anglia installed tables and changed how it deploys onboard cleaners, and the sentiment score for the onboard environment has since increased.
For Neil, the specific insight was what made the case for focused investment. His team could show where on the journey passengers were unhappy and what to change, and then show whether the change had worked.
Key metrics
177,000
Voices heard
273
Working days saved
£54,000
Labour cost savings
About Greater Anglia
Greater Anglia is one of the UK's busiest rail operators, running passenger trains across East Anglia and into London. Its customer experience and insights team works to give every passenger a good journey.
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 find out what's driving passenger satisfaction beyond punctuality?
Map every comment to a stage of the journey and measure sentiment at each one. Greater Anglia worked with Wordnerds on a framework built around its own customer journey, which showed that, beyond trains running on time, toilet cleanliness and having a table to work on affected satisfaction. Greater Anglia acted on both.
How do you relate survey comments to specific parts of the customer journey?
Build the analysis around your journey, not generic themes. Greater Anglia collects its surveys in Qualtrics, and Wordnerds ties each comment to a touchpoint on Greater Anglia's own customer journey, so the CX team can see where passengers are happy, where they hit friction, and how that changes over time.
How do you show that a customer experience change has worked?
Keep tracking sentiment at the same journey stage after you act. Greater Anglia installed tables on its trains and changed how it deploys onboard cleaners, and Wordnerds showed the sentiment score for the onboard environment rising afterwards, which Neil Atkin, Head of CX, described as evidence the changes had worked.
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