Case Study: Change Grow Live achieves higher service-user satisfaction and actionable feedback with HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals

Monitoring happiness during recovery helps the journey

Change Grow Live (CGL), a UK health and social care charity supporting people through substance-misuse recovery, needed an easier, real‑time way to capture service‑user satisfaction and demonstrate quality to commissioners and the Care Quality Commission. Traditional feedback (paper forms, interviews, focus groups) missed many voices, so CGL adopted HappyOrNot’s Smiley Terminal (later upgraded to Smiley Touch) to monitor how welcome and supported people felt during their recovery journey.

HappyOrNot installed terminals across multiple CGL sites, collecting roughly 400 responses a month to questions like “Would you recommend Change Grow Live…?” and providing trend and qualitative data after the Smiley Touch upgrade. The feedback revealed patterns (a May–Aug rise, a Sept–Oct dip, November rebound) and specific issues—e.g., Thursday morning phone coverage and low‑activity Fridays—prompting CGL to add telephone staff and Friday activities, which increased positive scores. CGL now uses HappyOrNot results to drive improvements, share transparent reports with teams, commissioners and the CQC, and validate the impact of service changes.

Change Grow Live

Minesh Patel

Head of Services