Peter has over 15 years of experience in customer service, contact centers, technology and operations spanning startup, growth stage and enterprise organizations globally.
Customer satisfaction score, or CSAT for short, is a key performance indicator that enables contact center management to track and measure customer satisfaction.
It's an important metric to monitor as it can uncover customer pain points, track progress in customer service efforts over time, and identify opportunities for improvement. But alone, it doesn’t provide a complete picture of the customer experience.
This article will cover what CSAT is, how you can calculate it, and how to get a complete picture of your customers’ experiences.
CSAT, or customer satisfaction score, is a measure to determine customer satisfaction with the interaction they had with a business. It is typically measured via a survey that is sent to the customer after the interaction. How it’s measured can vary and often the contact center will survey multiple different aspects of their interaction. The most common is: “How satisfied are you with the service you received today?” accompanied by a rating from 1-5.
The higher the score, the more satisfied the customer. CSAT helps organizations understand how their products and services are being received and can inform decisions about future improvements, including within contact center service.
There are a few ways to measure CSAT. One option is dividing the number of satisfied customers by the number of survey responses and then multiplying this number by 100 to create a percentage or total out of 100.
You can also report the average of your customer survey responses as a number between 1 and 5. For example, if there were 3 responses at 3, 4, and 5, the average CSAT would be 4.
A good customer satisfaction (CSAT) score meets or exceeds customer expectations, which means on a scale of 1 to 5, more of your customers should give you a 4 or 5 than a 3 (or below). However, a good CSAT score will vary depending on your business sector.
To get an idea of the typical CSAT score for your industry, you can use resources like ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index). The ACSI provides benchmark scores for various industries and companies.
Companies strive for high CSAT scores to ensure customers are satisfied with their product or service and ultimately become repeat customers.
Measuring customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a powerful way to gauge customer satisfaction and understand their experience with your brand. CSAT helps:
Targeted CSAT surveys help identify pain points across the entire customer journey, from sales to onboarding to customer service. They can help determine when the “pain” happens and how painful each of these processes are so organizations can determine what improvements to make.
There are a few ways to discover pain points. The traditional way would be to ask open-ended questions in surveys, poll customers on social media, and send out regular feedback emails. But, these methods are time-consuming and the gathered information can be subjective and limited.
How else can you discover customer pain points? Using contact center intelligence and analytics platforms like Operative Intelligence. Operative Intelligence analyzes 100% of inbound interactions and shares the root causes of overall inquiries using the customer’s actual words. Organizations no longer struggle with figuring out what their customers’ pain points are and how much they’re costing the company.
Plus, this process is entirely automated – saving months of time and effort – and the results are immediately available with a single click. You can be confident that the changes you’re making will give you the expected return through unique value scores for every driver.
Monitoring CSAT helps you spot trends in customer feedback and identify opportunities to improve customer loyalty. By understanding customer expectations–and where they’re not being met–you can determine how to better cater to your customers and reduce churn rates.
Analyzing CSAT data also provides valuable insights into the overall health of your customer service so that you can take strategic action to improve satisfaction levels and retain customers.
Advertising great CSAT scores can help you reach new potential customers and showcase the quality of your services or products. Here are some tips for how to advertise your CSAT scores:
While CSAT is a valuable metric, it still has its challenges.
Many surveys used for measuring customer satisfaction scores require time-consuming questionnaires. This can cause low response rates, typically between 4–12%.
Low response rates means you don’t have a complete and accurate picture of your entire customer base. And you can’t make data-driven decisions to improve a product, service, or company-wide process at scale without the data.
This type of bias occurs when respondents are not completely honest or accurate in their responses, even if they intend to be. It can lead to unreliable results and affect the overall ratings.
Several factors can cause survey bias, including:
Even if you only send a survey once a year, if your customers are filling out multiple (lengthy) surveys for other organizations, this can lead to a lower response rate on your survey. It can also lead to inaccurate results if the survey isn’t completed completely or the respondent is not engaged enough to give accurate feedback.
Operative Intelligence(OI) addresses all of these challenges. OI can determine CSAT for 100% of interactions without surveys, simply using the language used by customers in their interactions.
Operative Intelligence ensures that businesses and contact centers:
You can measure CSAT by following the steps below:
When designing a survey, it should have a good UI/UX that makes it appealing and convenient for customers to complete their surveys. You can create CSAT surveys by using online form builders or custom forms with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
To create an effective CSAT survey, consider the following points:
Once your survey is ready, you should distribute it to your customers. You can use email, website forms, telephonic-based surveys, or even SMS messages.
Make sure that the survey is tailored to the customer's experience and easy to complete.
Calculating the customer satisfaction score (CSAT) percentage is a straightforward process. To calculate your CSAT score, follow these steps:
(Number of satisfied customers / Number of survey responses) x 100 = % of satisfied customers
You can also track and report CSAT as the average score of your customers’ responses to your survey, as a number between 1 and 5. The closer to 5, the higher your customers’ satisfaction.
To effectively track and analyze customer satisfaction you need to implement a system that collects feedback on an ongoing basis across all channels (e.g., in-store visits, phone conversations, and website forms). This is especially important if you offer omnichannel services.
This data should then be analyzed regularly to gain insights into customer sentiment. With the right analytics tools, you can track trends over time and make meaningful comparisons between customer segments to understand where improvements are needed.
The final step is to act on the insights you have gained from your CSAT score. Take action based on customer feedback and incorporate their concerns, suggestions, and ideas into your customer service strategy.
What’s the easiest way to track, analyze, and act on your CSAT insights? Operative Intelligence. Businesses no longer need to waste time creating long and complex surveys. Operative Intelligence can determine CSAT for 100% of interactions without surveys, simply using the language used by customers on their interactions.
Using this data, contact center management teams can quickly discover the span of performance across teams, channels, and products. Team leaders can coach with precision and drive measurable improvements in customer service and customer experience.
CSAT, NPS, and CES are metrics used for measuring customer satisfaction. But how do they differ from each other?
CSAT measures the overall satisfaction with a specific product or service, while NPS (net promoter score) measures a customer’s willingness to recommend that product or service to others.
If you asked customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being extremely satisfied and 1 being unsatisfied, this would be a CSAT score. An NPS question would ask customers how likely they are to recommend the product/company on a scale from 0-10.
CSAT measures customer satisfaction by capturing customers' feelings in the moment, often during or immediately after a transaction.
CES, or customer effort score, measures the effort required for a customer to complete their task or goal by measuring how easy it was for them to achieve their desired outcome.
The traditional way to measure CSAT would be to ask open-ended questions in surveys, poll customers on social media, and send out regular feedback emails. But, these methods can be inaccurate and time-consuming.
Operative Intelligence is the best way to measure CSAT–and all contact center metrics. OI analyzes 100% of inbound interactions and shares the root causes of overall inquiries using direct phrases from customer speech.
It shows every inquiry's volume, cost, and sentiment, so contact center leaders know which changes will drive the highest impact improvements in their customer experience.
Ready to drive changes at every level of your business?
Book a demo with Operative Intelligence today.
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