CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)

What is CSAT?

Customer Satisfaction Score is a measure taken right after a specific interaction, such as closing a support request, finishing an installation or a branch visit, with a question like 'How satisfied are you with the service you received?'. It is most often answered on a 1 to 5 scale, and the score is the number of satisfied ratings (the 4s and 5s) divided by all ratings, multiplied by 100. Its strength is proximity: it tells you how one experience with one person went, which makes it ideal for improving daily operations and coaching the team. It is not enough on its own to judge long-term loyalty. Because customers forget the details of an interaction quickly, timing is part of accuracy: the closer the question is to the moment of resolution, the more honest the answer.

A worked example and how to read it

Illustrative example: the support team of an HR software vendor collects 150 ratings in a quarter: 88 fives, 30 fours, 18 threes and 14 ones or twos. CSAT is (88 + 30) / 150, about 79%. Sorting the low scores shows that most come from payroll-period tickets that waited overnight, so the team adds an evening shift during the last week of each month and watches the payroll category separately.

• Ask one question. Every extra question lowers the response rate.
• Follow up every 1 or 2 individually; it usually means the problem is not really solved.
• Split results by request type, agent and channel, because an overall average hides causes.
• Read the percentage together with the number of responses; people who answer tend to be the most pleased or the most annoyed.

In Naffes CRM

In the Naffes CRM help desk, when a ticket is marked solved or closed, the customer can receive a solved notice with a 1 to 5 rating request. It arrives by email, or on the WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or SMS thread the ticket came from, so customers answer on the channel they started on. It is switched on with the 'Solved notice with a rating request' option in the help desk settings, and each ticket is surveyed once.

• Confirmed ratings: the rating link opens a confirmation page before a score is saved, so email link scanners cannot record a rating the customer never gave, and only the first answer counts.
• Stored on the ticket: the score is saved on the ticket itself, so you know which request and which agent sit behind each rating.
• WhatsApp and the window: on a WhatsApp thread the request goes out as free text, so it is delivered while the 24-hour window with that customer is open.

For the request lifecycle that ends with the rating, see help desk ticket; to measure overall loyalty rather than one experience, see NPS.

Questions