What is CSAT and how to calculate it?

A CSAT metric can be both a short-term and long-term measure of customer satisfaction, but is focused on the satisfaction with a specific product or service.

In the age of social media and public reviews, customer service feedback has become increasingly honest. A detractor might be devastating for a business' customer retention rate, or it might help that business improve and grow. A CSAT is obtained by asking customers “How satisfied were you with your experience?” and giving them a survey scale of either 1–3, 1–5, or 1–10, or by percentage, with 100% being fantastic and 0% being very bad. The metric depends on the organization and how it decides to measure overall customer experience.

The biggest difference between CSAT, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES) are that they measure different aspects of customer experiences and use different rating scales for customer engagement.

CSAT is a real-time customer survey relating to a specific product or service. The limitation of the CSAT metric is that it doesn’t give a full, ongoing look into customer sentiment and their long-term relationship with the organization.

In contrast, NPS measures customer loyalty: “How likely are you to recommend (the organization/product/service) to a friend or colleague?” The purpose of this type of survey can help give a more holistic look into the organization or its product. NPS goes beyond CSAT surveys and provides a glimpse into customer expectations.

CES measures how easy it is for a customer to use a product or service, or complete a task within an organization. The CES can complement CSAT and NPS by predicting customer churn and the number of customers who are satisfied with how the process is being completed. By using all three metrics an organization can have multiple measures to look to when comparing itself to other competitors.

No matter what metric an organization chooses to use, the customer care approach is influential and important for building strong emotional connections to the customer.

When an organization uses CSAT depends on what types of products and services it offers. Some organizations have started to adopt contact center AI (CCAI) to power the customer experience, which might improve the result of CSAT survey over time.

• Customer lifecycle moments
• Before a renewal
  
• Postcustomer support

The feedback survey should be offered during key moments in a customer's experience. Likely times are during onboarding and during the postpurchase stages in the cycle. By surveying a customer during one of these key moments, the company can tie customer insights to specific interactions and in turn answer specific business questions.

An organization should consider sending a survey before subscription renewal. The sweet spot is six months before a renewal, as it gives you enough time to act on the survey feedback and mitigate unhappy customer feedback.¹

At the close of a customer support call to the organization's contact center, organizations might include a single satisfaction question or full CSAT survey, depending on the interaction. This type of immediate survey response request can be effective in getting real-time customer feedback, especially if a customer is already on the phone.

To calculate a CSAT score, add the positive responses (ratings of 4 or 5 out of 5, or 80–100%) together, divide them by the total number of responses collected, then multiply by 100. The resulting figure is the overall percentage of customers who are satisfied by the organization’s product or services.

A CSAT survey can be asked at any point in a customer journey, such as during the sales process or while using a product. It can provide feedback on a customer interaction at multiple touchpoints, in real-time.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) provides some industry benchmarks for CSAT scores, which can be used to judge an organization’s score against its industry. Some organizations can go even deeper into score analysis by looking at specific companies CSATs.

• Consumer shipping: 77 (2024)
• Banks: 80 (2024)
• Food manufacturing: 82 (2023)
• Automobiles: 80 (2024)
• Full-service restaurants: 84 (2024)
• Social media: 74 (2024)
• Airlines: 77 (2024)

• CSAT surveys are typically short and simple to complete

• CSAT, used alongside NPS and CES, can provide an overall picture of customer sentiment

• CSAT surveys tracked over time can result in predictive customer trends data that a single survey response can’t provide

• CSAT surveys give real-time feedback that is binary

• A CSAT score may be skewed by uncontrollable outside influence, such as current events or a customer’s personal situation

• The CSAT survey isn’t in-depth enough to give reasons for satisfaction or dissatisfaction, so the results might not provide ample insight

• Customers are more likely to complete a CSAT if they had an exceptionally good or exceptionally bad interaction, which can slant survey results toward the extremes

Organizations should pay attention to what their customers are saying and act on it. They should read support tickets and ask further questions, as needed, and make a plan to fix the issue.

It's better for an organization to be proactive with a customer than to only interact when there is a problem. An organization should reach out before there is an issue and try to predict where bottlenecks or a problem might occur.

Customers are people too and outside influences can impact a CSAT score, such as a current event or personal situation. It's important for an organization to take this into consideration when evaluating CSAT scores or before conducting the survey.

Automation is becoming increasingly popular, especially in the world of customer service and satisfaction. Organizations should stay up to date on the latest technology and always aiming to improve the digital experience for a customer.