Sainsbury's: the comments that explain why the score moved
Sainsbury's CSAT and Customer Closeness team gets around 2 million survey responses a year, far more than anyone could read. With Wordnerds finding the themes, Kat and Amelia can tell the business not just that a score is moving, but why.
Last updated 13 November 2026
Hear Kat and Amelia tell the story
Kat Eastwood and Amelia, Sainsbury's CSAT and Customer Closeness team. Duration: 13 minutes.
At a glance
Sainsbury's, the UK's second largest grocer
Told by Kat Eastwood and Amelia, CSAT and Customer Closeness
Around 2 million survey responses a year, plus complaints and social
Themes that explain score changes, shared with senior leaders
The challenge
Sainsbury's had millions of comments, and needed to know why its scores were moving
Kat Eastwood heads up Sainsbury's CSAT and Customer Closeness team, which tracks customer satisfaction and the brand and works to understand customers' mindsets more broadly. Amelia, in the same team, looks after all things customer satisfaction.
The team gets around 2 million responses to its customer feedback surveys every year. It reads a selection, because it needs to know how customers are talking, but it physically can't read them all. And surveys are only part of it, with social media, a couple of hundred thousand complaints a week and contact centre messages all sitting in different pockets of the business.
Scores on their own only went so far. When a metric moved, the team could tell the business it was going up, the business would ask why, and without the comments the team would be left scratching its head. Kat had spent a long time looking for a text analytics tool, and nothing had quite hit the mark, because even the big players needed the topics coding in first.
How they did it
To find the why, Sainsbury's let Wordnerds find the themes in what customers wrote
Kat and Amelia brought every source into Wordnerds and let the topics come through on their own.
Pulled every source together
Surveys, social media, complaints and contact centre messages go into Wordnerds and are categorised the same way, so the team gets one clear overview of the whole business.
Let the topics find themselves
Wordnerds pulls out topics without being told what to look for, so the team hears what customers want to talk about as well as what the survey asks them.
Tracked themes as they grew
The team watches which themes are rising, even smaller ones, so it can tell the business when customers' focus is starting to shift.
When the cost of living hit, the comments showed what customers were changing
The cost-of-living crisis changed how people shopped, as customers adapted what they bought and spent to manage much tighter budgets. Because Wordnerds pulls out topics on its own, the team could get to grips with changes it wouldn't have known to ask about.
Open-ended questions let customers talk about what they want to talk about, so new trends come through before anyone has written a question for them. And when a topic matters at the time, the team can set up a theme to follow it.
What they do now
Sainsbury's puts customers' words in front of the people who can act
The team sees itself as the champion of the customer, and the comments go to every level.
A Monday meeting on feedback
Every Monday morning the team discusses what's coming through, with the comments alongside the numbers.
A heads-up before scores drop
The team passes what it sees to the right teams, so they can act before scores start to be affected.
Senior forums that lead to action
Regular forums take the drivers and pain points to the most senior people, and a theme that keeps coming up for two or three months leads to action.
What changed
Sainsbury's can explain why a score moves, and people remember it
Wordnerds brings Sainsbury's survey comments, social media and complaints together and finds the themes in them, including ones nobody thought to ask about. When a score moves, the CSAT and Customer Closeness team can explain why in customers' own words, and those words reach the most senior parts of the business.
The comments carry a lot of weight in the room. A couple of powerful customer quotes will be repeated around the business for weeks, and a huge amount of feedback that used to sit unused now gets used.
Next, Kat wants to take the themes to every store, grouped and automated so that busy store teams can see what their own customers are saying and what to do about it.
Key metrics
4.5MVoices heard
11,200Working days saved
£2MLabour cost savings
About Sainsbury's
Sainsbury's is the UK's second largest grocer, with more than 600 supermarkets and 885 convenience stores, and around 70% of the country shopped with it over the past year. Its purpose is making good food joyful, accessible and affordable for everyone, every day.
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 explain why a customer satisfaction score is moving?
Go straight from the score to the comments behind it. When a metric moves, Sainsbury's CSAT and Customer Closeness team looks at the themes Wordnerds has found in its survey comments, social media and complaints, and explains the change to the business in customers' own words.
Can you analyse millions of survey comments without predefined categories?
Yes. Sainsbury's gets around 2 million survey responses a year, and Wordnerds pulls out the topics in them without being told what to look for. That let the team spot how the cost of living was changing the way customers shopped, which it wouldn't have known to ask about.
How do you get senior leaders to act on customer feedback?
Take it to them regularly, with the customer's voice and a question for their area. Sainsbury's shares the drivers of its scores and the biggest pain points in regular senior forums, with discussion points, and when the same theme comes up for two or three months in a row, the business acts on it.
What would Wordnerds surface from your feedback?
Book a diagnostic and we'll look at your customer feedback together — and show you the themes hiding in it.
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