Summary
With more than 1.6 million visitors each year, St Giles' Cathedral sits at the heart of Edinburgh's historic Royal Mile. Welcoming global audiences brings huge opportunity — but also a challenge: how do you capture meaningful visitor feedback at scale without increasing staff workload?
To solve this, the Cathedral introduced SaySo, Hoxton AI's spoken visitor feedback system.
For Stephen Preston, Chief Operating Officer at St Giles' Cathedral, the goal was clear: gain deeper, more representative visitor insight without creating additional operational pressure.
The result: richer insights, more inclusive feedback, and a dramatically more efficient approach to evaluation.
The Challenge: Meaningful Feedback Without Bias or Operational Burden
Before implementing SaySo, Stephen and his team struggled to balance depth, quality and efficiency when gathering visitor feedback. Traditional surveys either limited responses or required significant time from both visitors and staff.
"Previously, there was always a compromise in the data we got — whether that was time, depth or quality. We wanted feedback that wasn't influenced by the way we asked the question." — Stephen Preston, COO
Tick-box surveys captured only predefined ideas, while open text feedback proved time-consuming to collect and analyse.
"Tick boxes meant we were only getting responses to ideas we generated. Free text was slow. SaySo gives both us and the visitor the most efficient way of communicating feedback."
Hearing from the 50% of Visitors Who Were Previously Silent
Around half of all visitors to St Giles' Cathedral come from countries where English is not a first language. This meant valuable perspectives were often missing from traditional feedback channels.
With SaySo's ability to detect and translate multiple languages, Stephen and the team are now building a much clearer picture of how international audiences experience the site.
"It's amazing that it can detect any language. For a site like ours, with over a million visitors from all over the world, this means we can finally hear from people we were previously missing."
These insights are particularly valuable when communicating sensitive topics such as the commercialisation of religious spaces.
"Different nationalities and cultures view commercialisation of churches in different ways. Now we can start planning how we adapt our message."
Capturing the 'In-Between' Feedback That Traditional Surveys Miss
One unexpected benefit has been the shift in the type of feedback received.
Rather than hearing only extreme opinions, spoken responses are revealing more nuanced perspectives across the full visitor journey.
"For the first time we're seeing the 'in-between' feedback on a proportional scale. We're finally getting the whole picture."
These insights are already feeding into a major interpretation review, helping the Cathedral refine how stories, history and visitor information are presented.
Making Evaluation Simple Enough to Actually Happen
A key impact of SaySo has been removing the operational friction that often prevents evaluation programmes from getting started.
"The mental block of planning, implementing and analysing evaluation often meant we didn't bother. SaySo is simple."
Implementation required virtually no staff time, while the volume and quality of feedback has encouraged the organisation to invest more resource into analysing insights and identifying long-term trends.
"It took almost no time to put in place — but the richness of feedback has challenged us to dedicate more time to analysing it properly."
The Cathedral is even exploring partnerships with university researchers to unlock deeper patterns within the data.
Supporting Internal Learning and Quality Improvement
Beyond visitor insight, St Giles' Cathedral is also exploring how spoken feedback can support internal quality evaluation, providing a more empowering alternative to traditional assessment methods.
"We're aiming to use SaySo for internal evaluation. It puts the evaluative power into the hands of the person carrying it out, rather than giving them limited options to choose from."
A More Inclusive, Efficient Future for Visitor Insight
By making feedback natural, multilingual and easy to analyse, SaySo has enabled St Giles' Cathedral to re-establish a consistent approach to understanding visitor experience.
For Preston, the biggest benefit so far is clear:
"Undoubtedly the efficiency of the evaluation process."
With richer data, broader audience representation and minimal operational burden, the Cathedral is now better equipped to make informed decisions — ensuring it continues to welcome and engage global visitors for years to come.
Key Highlights
- Multilingual spoken feedback capturing perspectives from 1.6 million annual visitors
- 50% of visitors are non-English speakers — now heard for the first time
- Nuanced 'in-between' feedback replacing extreme-only responses
- Virtually zero staff time to implement
- Insights feeding into a major interpretation review
- University research partnerships being explored
