Guide to Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

There are several methodologies and techniques to measure customer satisfaction but the most popular is Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). It is the easiest and the most straightforward technique to measure customer satisfaction.

This guide will cover everything you need to know about CSAT and how it can help your business improve customer satisfaction.

What is Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)?

CSAT lets you measure customer satisfaction for single customer interaction with your business. The survey asks a single 5-point Linkert scale questionnaire to the customers based on their recent interaction.

For instance, you can measure satisfaction for customer service interaction, checkout process, a recent product purchase, etc.

It doesn’t have to be a 5-point Likert scale rather you can use 3-point, 7-point, or even 10-point scale. Here is how Skype measures customer satisfaction after users make a call.

The CSAT is measured in percentage. The responses are used to find the CSAT score for that particular interaction or service. Here is the formula used to calculate the CSAT score:

Number of positive responses / Total number of responses x 100 = CSAT%

Positive responses here refer to respondents who either rate 4 or 5 on a 5-point Likert scale. You’ll get the score in the form of a percentage. How do you know if the score is good or bad?

You need to compare the score against the benchmark report by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. So if your CSAT score for a computer software company is 85%, it is well above the benchmark (78%) which means you’re doing well than your competitors.

If your industry isn’t available in the ACSI benchmark report, you need to use the overall US CSAT score of 76.5%.

What makes CSAT score important and why you should use it specifically and not any other customer satisfaction methodology?

It is simple and easy.

Creating, running, and analyzing the CSAT score is extremely easy. You don’t have to use any survey tool to run a CSAT campaign. You can create the question manually and distribute it via any method you like such as Google Forms.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) asks a single question so it yields a fairly high response rate. Respondents don’t hesitate to answer a simple question. Calculating the CSAT score and comparing it with the benchmark report is another reason why it should be your business’s first choice for measuring customer satisfaction.

How to Run and Measure a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) Campaign

Running and managing a CSAT campaign to measure customer satisfaction isn’t complicated. If you know what you have to do and how to do it, measuring customer satisfaction becomes simple. After all, that’s the whole point of using CSAT score, right?

You can initiate a campaign in 4-steps that are discussed in detail below.

Step #1: Set Clear Objectives

Defining goals and objectives for the campaign is essential. You need to have a clear purpose of why you need to do this survey and what you intend to achieve with it.

For instance, you could run a survey to see how satisfied customers are from a new feature that you added to a product. In this case, product improvement is the objective. You want to see how well the newly added feature is doing.

Without setting objectives for a customer satisfaction survey, you will run it without any usefulness. Your team won’t have any idea of how to interpret the results. The survey results won’t be used for decision-making.

Setting goals for the campaign help you use results for decision-making.

Step #2: Identify Event/Trigger for Survey

It is essential to identify how customers are qualified for the survey. What triggers the survey? What event or action will trigger the survey?

You can’t send a survey to all the customers, it won’t work. You need to make sure that only relevant customers who used the service are contacted. For instance, the customer service survey should be sent to the customers who contacted customer support via email, live chat, or phone.

If you’re only measuring the satisfaction of customers who contact support via email, the survey triggers whenever a customer’s email query is marked solved.

The survey should be sent immediately after the customer experience. The earlier you send it, the better. Customers forget the experience when the survey is delayed and this will impact their responses.

You also need to create the question at this stage. It should have simple and clear wording. Here is a general template that you can use:

“How satisfied are you with ……………?”

Simply fill the blank and your survey will be ready-to-use. For instance, how satisfied are you with customer service, how satisfied are you with our product, how satisfied are you with this blog post, etc.

Step #3: Choose Survey Medium

How do you want to send the survey to customers? There are multiple ways to send survey:

1. Email
2. Website via widget
3. Social media
4. In-app
5. SMS
6. IVR

There isn’t any best or worst medium. If you can use multiple mediums, go for them. It is always better to use multiple mediums whenever possible. For instance, you can send a survey via email, SMS, and in-app.

However, you need to make sure that one customer fills the survey only once. Don’t send multiple surveys to the same customers. What you need to do is send a survey to one customer via one medium and send others through another medium.

This will help you measure and compare the response rate of different mediums which will help you in future customer satisfaction surveys.

Step #4: Analyze and Repeat

Analyzing the survey responses for CSAT is easy. Even if you aren’t using a survey tool, you can do it manually in MS Excel. If you have a large sample size, it is recommended to use a survey tool that will analyze responses automatically and will generate reports that will help with decision-making.

The next big step is to take appropriate action based on responses. Conducting a survey isn’t enough rather it is useless if you don’t use its results for decision-making. What you do when CSAT score is below industry benchmark? How you tackle it is the crux.

For instance, if a survey reveals that customers aren’t satisfied with your customer support. You need to train agents, update/change customer services software, and conduct telephonic interviews with selected customers to dig deep and find exact issues customers are facing.

Once you have taken the necessary steps, repeat the customer survey to see if things really improved. You need to make sure that your actions increased customer satisfaction. If it didn’t, you need to see what went wrong. Continue repeating the survey. Don’t stop.

Conclusion

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) provides you with an extremely simple and straightforward method for measuring customer satisfaction. You don’t have any excuse.

Measuring customer satisfaction is a continuous process. Run multiple campaigns to measure customer satisfaction for different features, products, interactions, and events. Use data for decision-making to make your customers happy and satisfied.