Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

What is Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)?

Customer satisfaction (or CSAT) is often used as a metric or KPI to indicate the quality of a product or service experience. CSAT is commonly shown as a percentage from 0-100%, with 100% being great.

How do you capture CSAT?

CSAT is usually captured through intercepts, site surveys, or upon submission of customer feedback. While there are a few ways to capture CSAT ratings, the most common structure is as follows:

"How would you rate your satisfaction with the product/service/experience?"

Responses are then collected with a 5-point scale that includes the following choices:

How do you calculate CSAT?

Calculating customer satisfaction is pretty easy. It involves a method called top-box analysis, which combines the responses of customers who rated customer satisfaction as a 4 or 5 (the top ratings) and then compares those against the rest of the ratings.

The formula looks something like this:

# of satisfied respondents (selected 4 or 5) / # of total survey respondents x 100 = Score of satisfied customers.

Alternatively, you can just use the percentage of respondents, which may be a little easier:

% of respondents who rated 4 or 5 = Score of satisfied customers

When do you measure CSAT?

Most CSAT surveys are used to measure a specific experience rather than ongoing experiences; this usually relates to setup and/or other service interactions. This can typically range from hours to a few days after an interaction with the customer service team. Often the CSAT score is aggregated as an average and presented to stakeholders on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis.

What is a good CSAT score?

Everyone wants to know how they stack up, but it's important to remember that “good” depends on what you're comparing it to. Benchmarking your CSAT can be done by comparing it to products and companies that relate to your product and brand. You’ll just want to make sure it’s a true and accurate comparison (i.e., using similar questions, measurements, calculations, etc.)

Comparing your product or service to itself

When comparing your product or service’s CSAT to itself, you’ll generally want to look at how satisfaction is trending over time. So, you’ll take one time period and compare it to CSAT measurements from prior months, quarters, or years. This allows you to understand if your CSAT is good or bad compared to the previous scores.

Compared to other products or services you offer

Comparing CSAT against your other product lines or services is great for understanding the brand's average CSAT as a whole. It can help you surface strengths and weaknesses in your product portfolio.

Comparing to industry standards

Using an industry standard benchmark is great if you are in an established industry. Check out https://www.theacsi.org/ to see if you have a benchmark to compare against.