Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer Satisfaction, or CSAT, is a customer experience metric that measures happiness with a product, service, or support interaction through a customer satisfaction survey. CSAT surveys look to measure a customer's “here and now” reaction to a specific interaction, product, or event. This blog post will cover implementing these surveys, understanding the data generated, and how it can benefit your organization.

How satisfied were you with our customer support performance?

Unhappy

Neutral

Satisfied

Submit

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Easy to implement and manage.
• Intuitive score to understand.
• Generally high response rates since it's low friction.

Cons

• Polarized results- those who submit tend to skew highly positive or negative. This is called response bias.
• "Satisfed" is subjective, and may mean different things to different people.
• Surveys are limited in the information they capture.

Measuring CSAT

The most common method of obtaining CSAT information is to survey your customers with some variation of, "“How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the [service/product] you received?” Recipients can assign a score, such as a scale of 1 - 5:

1. Very unsatisfied
2. Unsatisfied
3. Neutral
4. Satisfied
5. Very satisfied

To calculate your score as a percentage, sum all positive responses (scores 4 or 5) divided by the total amount of responses. Then multiply by 100. For example, if you received 100 total responses and 94 of them were positive — your CSAT score would be 94%.

(94 positive responses / 100 total responses = .94 x 100 = 94%)

CSAT timing

You generally want to collect customer feedback immediately, so that the experience is fresh in the mind of the responder. CSAT is a “right here, right now” metric that relates to a specific experience rather than an ongoing customer relationship. This doesn't preclude you from using a CSAT survey to learn about the experience of a longer term sale, but it may require you to word your question differently.

To keep response rates high, make sure you’re not over-surveying the same customer, that surveys are triggered upon completion of the interaction, and that you’ll be able to respond to any feedback received to ensure the customers feel heard.

What is "good"?

You need to establish a benchmark score before you can derive real meaning from your CSAT data. To track your progress, you should measure CSAT on an ongoing basis by making CSAT a routine part of your customer experience program. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) maintains scores for different industries, and may be a good place to start if you need to have a sense of how your organization compares to competition. One thing is certain, however – if your score is moving from lower to higher, you’re doing something right!

CSAT over time

How to use CSAT

CSAT scores are a useful measure of your customer experience. But knowing the status of your customer experience performance is just the beginning. It’s what you do with the scores to drive and improve that experience that really counts! CSAT scores should be viewed in the context of other customer metrics (e.g. NPS, CES) to understand the drivers behind the scores so you can take action to improve the customer experience.