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Topic(s): Customer Centricity Metrics & Methodology Customer Experience

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): everything you need to know

What is CSAT and how do you measure it?

CSAT or the Customer Satisfaction Score is a key metric companies or organizations use to measure customer satisfaction after specific customer interactions.

To measure satisfaction with CSAT, companies and organizations send out surveys where customers can rate their experience with a score, mostly with a scale from 1 to 5 or 1 to 7. 1 being very unsatisfied and 5 or 7, depending on the range, being very satisfied.

CSAT - Customer Satisfaction Score

CSAT surveys can give you a lot of business insights, including:

  • how happy customers are with a specific topic or process of your business so you can pinpoint issues
  • how to improve customer relations
  • how to optimize or streamline certain business processes 
  • which products or services you should develop next

In general, the CSAT metric allows you to predict customer loyalty and identify friction points in your customer journey. CSAT can be used alongside Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES) - as part of your Voice of the Customer program.

Using CSAT as a survey metric


When should you use the CSAT metric?

The best setup to measure customer satisfaction will be different for every company, depending on the importance of the interactions and KPI's. The essence is that you send out a CSAT survey after transactional customer touchpoints, not long after the actual interaction.

These touchpoints are specific interactions a company has with a customer along the customer journey, such as a purchase of a product or a service-related interaction.

Here are 3 examples of transactional touchpoints that provide valuable insights for a lot of our customers:

  • Following an interaction with customer support

You can send out CSAT surveys after contact with customer support, or after reading the FAQ. Asking people how satisfied they are with your service after reading a knowledge base article or talking with one of your customer support representatives can help you know how helpful they were.

  • At the end of the checkout process

You can ask your clients about how satisfied they are with their experience at the end of the checkout process. At this point, the opinion they have formed about your brand is still fresh in their heads. And, they are more than willing to inform you whether or not your company delivered a pleasant shopping experience.

  • Before renewal

Send a survey every quarter or so to see if your users are satisfied. This allows you to have an overview of their experience through time. You can also ask your service subscribers a few months before their renewal date if they are pleased with it. This gives you enough time to address any concerns that arise before it's too late.

Don’t forget that your company evolves, as do your customers. To make sure the changes you make have a positive impact on your customer satisfaction, send out CSAT surveys regularly. This way you keep updated on people’s opinion about your company, product and service. Be careful not to send too many surveys, since this could annoy your customers. Find the sweet spot for your company and customers.


Which CSAT question should you ask?

Asking the right questions will get you the insights with the most value. Keep them simple, straightforward, polite and most of all concrete. Here are a few examples:

  1. Overall, how satisfied are you with the [product/service] you received?
  2. How would you rate our [product/service] in terms of quality?
  3. How well did our [product/service] meet your expectations?
  4. How would you rate the value for money of the [product/service]?
  5. How responsive were the customer service representatives when you had an issue or concern?
  6. How satisfied were you with our delivery/shipping?
  7. How satisfied were you with the ease of use of the [product/service]?
  8. How satisfied were you with the level of customization/personalization of the [product/service]?
  9. How likely are you to purchase the [product/service] again?

The number of questions definitely matter; no one likes spending 15 minutes answering a long list of (difficult) questions. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. How would you like to share your feedback? Short surveys get higher response rates, but make sure you take the time to ask the important questions you need answers to.

However, we strongly recommend adding at least this one specific question to your survey so you can identify the reason behind the score: “why did you give us this score?”. When doing this at scale, you can easily predict the key driver of your customer satisfaction - so you know which topics to prioritize.

Calculating and improving your CSAT score

The CSAT calculation formula

To know your percentage of satisfied customers, you use the CSAT calculation formula. You can calculate your overall CSAT score by dividing the total number of positive responses by the total number of received responses, then multiplying it by 100

So, if 55 out of 100 customers give you a good score (like 4 or 5 on a scale of 5), your CSAT score is 55.

CSAT formulaWhat is a good CSAT score?

The results of CSAT benchmarks vary, depending on the sector, but in general, between 75% and 85% is a good score. A 75% score means that 3 out of every 4 customers gave you positive feedback rather than a negative or neutral one. A good CSAT score is great for your company, but without concrete actions there’s little value. Be sure to make the right decisions and take action where necessary, based on the results of your CSAT surveys.

How do you improve your CSAT score?

In most industries and when done right, customer satisfaction and customer service performance are measured through CSAT surveys even though in practice we still see a lot of NPS.

But just numbers and percentages are not enough to get the best out of your CSAT score. As stated before, you should definitely consider including open-ended questions to better understand what is driving or harming customer satisfaction. Using the combination of these two allows you to identify the reasons behind the score and the customer’s personal experience with your company, providing actionable customer insights.

You will improve your CSAT score by taking action and solving identified customer friction.

With Hello Customer, you can automatically extract customer insights from open feedback at scale with powerful AI-powered Feedback Analytics so you don’t have to manually go through thousands of survey responses. All of your feedback is automatically sorted into categories and subcategories, while the sentiment analysis gives you insight into what is positive, neutral or negative. This way, you can get a birds-eye view of what needs your attention first to increase your customers' satisfaction.

ISAAC feedback analysis ENG (1)


Conclusion

The Customer Satisfaction Score is an excellent metric to measure satisfaction at specific transactional touchpoints. CSAT surveys with simple questions allow for a better understanding of how different aspects of your business are performing, combining the questions with open feedback options is the way to go.

A CSAT survey allows you to understand things like customer sentiment, your churn risk, and how well you rank against your competitors. You can integrate it with other customer satisfaction metrics like Net Promoter Score and Customer Effort Score, in order to fully comprehend your customer experience program's current situation. Start taking action based on your received results now and watch your Customer Satisfaction Score improve!