Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) are important to measure and improve. Whether you use in-the-moment feedback tools or regular conversations with your customers, you should make CSAT part of your overall quality assessment strategy.
Combined with internal QA and industry benchmarks, it can give you profound insights into user expectations. So, let’s dive into what CSAT is and how it’s measured.
Definition
What is a CSAT survey? Customer satisfaction surveys are designed to measure how satisfied customers are with a product or service. They can take on many forms, from a simple “thumbs up” to a standardized rating scale or even a CES/NPS score. Regardless of what form they take, though, the objective is the same — to determine and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.
A key benefit of CSAT surveys is their ability to shed light on the specific areas of your business that need improvement. By leveraging quantitative and qualitative feedback, companies can identify and address problems, increase overall satisfaction, and deliver more value to their customers.
In addition, a regular stream of CSAT surveys can be used to monitor changes in customer satisfaction over time. This can help companies identify any negative trends and take corrective action before they lead to a decline in customer loyalty.
CSAT surveys can also help companies spot churn risks and make data-driven decisions based on customer needs. Whether it’s a new feature release or a long support wait time, the insights from these surveys can help businesses create and execute strategies that align with customer expectations. This, in turn, can lead to higher customer loyalty and overall growth. As a result, CSAT surveys are critical to any business that wants to succeed in today’s competitive landscape.
Origins
Customer satisfaction surveys come in various forms and work differently, but they all serve the same purpose: determining how satisfied your customers are with your business. They can take the form of questions in a format and more distributed and personalized tools like conversation reviews (in which peers or dedicated QA specialists analyze support conversations to assess quality).
Your business objectives will determine the type of feedback you collect. CSAT surveys are a key part of any customer service strategy, and it’s important to measure the quality of your support interactions regularly to identify trends and areas for improvement.
To ensure your CSAT surveys are as effective as possible, you’ll want to ensure they are targeted and delivered in the right context. For example, if you are tracking satisfaction after a customer support interaction, it’s best to send the survey immediately following that experience rather than waiting for a week or two.
Additionally, the more specific the questions are, the more accurate and valuable your feedback will be. The best way to gather detailed and actionable feedback is to ask open-ended questions, which allow respondents to provide a more in-depth response that doesn’t fit into a predefined category. You can use tools that include open-ended questions in their surveys or create your own using a tool like Typeform.
Types
Many businesses use CSAT surveys in their support processes, and with good reason — they offer an easy way to collect valuable customer feedback that can help improve the product and service. They can be used to gauge overall satisfaction with a product or at specific touchpoints in the customer journey, like when purchasing something online or calling for help.
However, there are some problems with this type of survey – the first problem is that it can be skewed by people who are very upset or happy. These results will skew the overall score higher or lower than they actually should be. Secondly, the responses can be difficult to interpret. For example, a person in the US might be more likely to choose “Very Satisfied” than someone from Japan who might be more comfortable choosing “Not Satisfied.”
Another area for improvement is that they can take a lot of time and effort to complete. The best way to get the most useful results from these surveys is to use a tool that can automatically collect them after every customer interaction. This can be done with most helpdesk tools and is a much more efficient approach than asking customers to complete a survey after each conversation. Lastly, if you collect CSAT from your customers, giving them a compelling reason to complete the study is important. Incentives like a free item with their next purchase or being entered into a raffle are a great way to encourage them to respond.
Scoring
CSAT surveys typically ask customers to rate their satisfaction with a company on a rating scale. Using graphic scales like smileys or stars can increase response rates and make it easy for the customer to respond. In addition, adding follow-up questions can help customers clarify their answers in their own words. This type of open comment form, available with survey tools, helps provide deeper insight into the reasons behind a customer’s rating.
Although CSAT scores offer a quick snapshot of customer happiness, using this data with other customer experience metrics like NPS and CES is important. These metrics give insight into the specific touchpoints where you excel and struggle, helping you improve your overall customer service performance.
The timing of your survey is also important. Your customer satisfaction score will reflect how a customer feels about your business at a given time (onboarding, subscription renewal, etc). However, if you set expectations of around-the-clock support on your website and then only answer inquiries from Monday to Friday, your customers may feel disappointed and frustrated by your actions.
Finally, if you take the time to analyze and interpret your open-ended responses, it’s easier to get actionable insights from your customer satisfaction data. To make the most of your CSAT results, look for survey tools that allow you to automatically read and tag these open-ended comments using machine learning technology.