Regardless of the exact form they take, all CSAT surveys serve one purpose: To help you determine customer satisfaction. They can be quantitative or qualitative. They can use numbers or international symbols.
Getting your survey respondents to respond is critical. Tailor your survey to the channels they use and remove barriers.
What is a CSAT Survey?
Many still need clarification on what is a CSAT survey. CSAT surveys are a form of closed-ended feedback that asks customers to rate their satisfaction with a product, service, or experience. They can be sent through email, chatbots, or apps, and they are usually deployed at key customer journey touchpoints, like post-purchase onboarding and renewals. They can be centered on specific products or services, the company website, or marketing campaigns.
The most common format for a CSAT survey question is, “How satisfied are you with your experience today?” Customer responses can then be used to calculate a score. This score is typically reported as the percentage of respondents rated between 4 and 5.
A good CSAT score will show your customers are happy with a particular service, product, or experience. However, CSAT alone is not a predictor of customer retention, so it’s best to pair it with a periodic NPS survey to get the whole picture.
One of the most important things to know about CSAT is that it can be difficult to benchmark. While there are resources that provide typical customer satisfaction scores for industries, products, and brands, these scores tend to vary widely. For this reason, it’s best to focus on improving your results over time. This can be done by making CSAT a routine part of your customer experience program.
Why Conduct CSAT Surveys?
CSAT surveys can give you a profound insight into how your business meets user expectations. You can detect subtle shifts in user sentiment by asking open-ended questions and tracking the responses over time. This data can also help you determine which parts of your product, customer service, or business services are working well – and which need improvement.
Unlike NPS or CES, which focus on specific actions and experiences, CSAT is a broad metric encompassing the entire customer experience. This makes it a valuable metric to track over time, and you can easily compare results from different periods to see which actions drive satisfaction.
CSAT is a great way to capture customer sentiment at a given time. Because it’s usually based on a single question, you can quickly generate high response rates by sending it via email or pop-up on apps or chats. This can be an incredibly effective strategy if you want to evaluate your customer support team’s performance or identify any problems with your products, for example.
However, it’s important to note that CSAT only reflects how customers feel when they respond. It’s not a measure of their long-term satisfaction with your company, and your survey can be affected by other factors, such as the current state of your relationship or their emotional well-being.
How to Conduct CSAT Surveys
CSAT is a simple and easy-to-measure metric with a single question asking respondents to rate their satisfaction with the product or service they received. The resulting score is usually expressed as a percentage, with 0% total dissatisfaction and 100% total satisfaction.
CSAT is a crucial metric for customer support teams because it helps them uncover any dissatisfaction that might lead to churn or revenue loss. Support teams often send out CSAT surveys immediately after a customer conversation to get feedback while the experience is fresh. Using pre-built CSAT questions built into your helpdesk or a dedicated survey tool will allow you to keep track of customer satisfaction in real time.
Other customer satisfaction metrics like NPS and CES can provide more insights into customer relationships. Still, for specific experiences that a company or brand may have, CSAT is an excellent way to keep track of your customers’ reactions and expectations. Make sure to use a multi-metric approach when analyzing your customer feedback, including demographic data and other business metrics like NPS or CES, to ensure you have a complete picture of your customers.
For example, you can combine your NPS and CES scores with your customer CSAT data to run correlation and regression models to identify the factors most driving loyalty. You can also look at your CSAT results to see how you compare to other companies and industry leaders to identify growth opportunities.
CSAT Survey Results
CSAT surveys are flexible and can measure different aspects of the customer experience. For example, a company can survey customers on product features or customer service interactions to assess whether they meet expectations. This enables companies to target specific business areas and identify pain points that must be addressed.
Regardless of their form, however, all types of surveys have pros and cons. In particular, CSAT surveys are subject to a certain amount of bias. This is because respondents tend to skew towards either very positive or very negative responses. For this reason, it is important to ask open-ended questions in addition to CSAT questions for more profound insight. For instance, you can use AI text analysis tools to help you uncover what makes your customers tick in response to open-ended CSAT questions.
In addition, CSAT scores are based on those who respond and, as such, are not representative of all customers. Ultimately, measuring CSAT alongside other metrics, such as NPS and CES, is best to gain a rounded picture of your customer experience. With these insights, you can ensure your customers get what they need from your brand and remain loyal in the long run.