Town & Country: From Excel Hell to Evidence-Based Action

The Challenge

Theo Scott and his team at Town & Country Housing were stuck in manual analysis hell. Hours spent coding Excel spreadsheets. Inconsistent categorisation making the data unreliable. Growing volumes of qualitative feedback as they added more open comment fields. And mounting regulatory pressure to prove they actually understood what residents felt about their services.

"I remember three, four years ago, I was spending hours and hours looking at Excel spreadsheets, trying to brand the different comments into useful information," Theo recalls. "Depending on how I felt that day I might put a comment in a different theme, and it was very hard to be consistent and reliable."

They needed a way to discover the 'why' behind satisfaction scores without drowning in data.

The Solution

After an initial demo with Wordnerds, Theo was intrigued but cautious. "I don't know whether Social Housing is ready for this," he thought. But a proof of concept using a year's worth of transactional survey data convinced him—and more importantly, his executive team.

Now Town & Country uses Wordnerds to analyse resident feedback from all sources, identify themes with depth and specificity, generate regular insight reports for managers, and integrate qualitative insights into their Power BI dashboards.

The Impact

The transformation has been cultural. "It's really embedded into our culture now how we use data to drive service improvements," says Theo.

When residents at Waters Edge complained about dirty communal water, the team used Wordnerds to do a deep dive. "When we challenged the contractor, we pulled out all the reports from Wordnerds... showing them word for word what residents were saying about dirty water." The contractor admitted to using dirty water due to lack of access to taps. Town & Country installed taps across the estate. Problem solved.

Beyond specific wins, Wordnerds has changed how the organisation operates. The team now confidently makes recommendations backed by evidence, focuses on creating meaningful change rather than drowning in analysis, and even shows residents how their feedback directly drives improvements.

"Wordnerds has helped me to save time and actually stopped me putting a business case in for more resources," Theo notes. "It's allowed us to save so much time to focus on the recommendations, support managers to actually drive those recommendations."

The Bottom Line

"Don't be scared because people are thinking AI, what is a social housing organisation doing looking at AI?" Theo advises other housing providers. "It's been great in terms of saving time, great accuracy, and it helps you to clearly understand what residents are saying with context. It helps you to understand where you need to focus your energy with actionable insights based on real evidence."