In the past, many companies mostly con­cen­trated on product quality. What they didn’t know then was that customer sat­is­fac­tion does not only depend on this but also other stages of the customer journey. This includes, for example, the initial con­sulta­tion, the ordering processes and the customer service. Various studies have shown that a smooth buying ex­per­i­ence can increase the overall sat­is­fac­tion and loyalty of customers and can therefore result in them spending more money on the company’s offers in the long run.

This knowledge is becoming in­creas­ingly more important for en­tre­pren­eurs who are focusing their marketing efforts more on the needs of their customers. However, as a highly sub­ject­ive target, sat­is­fac­tion is harder to measure than other con­ven­tion­al KPIs (Key Per­form­ance Indicator) such as im­pres­sions or clicks. There are now several models that can be used to measure customer sat­is­fac­tion: one of the most popular models is the Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score (CSAT). In the following, you will find out what exactly it’s all about, how it’s measured, and how you can best use it to gain reliable in­form­a­tion on the sat­is­fac­tion of your customers.

Defin­i­tion: Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score

The Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score is a value used to measure customer sat­is­fac­tion in relation to a company or corporate per­form­ance. It is of par­tic­u­lar interest to busi­nesses that have regular direct contact with their customers - for example, if your business is involved in social media and also offers support via direct messaging. Ad­di­tion­ally, the CSAT is suitable for eval­u­at­ing call centres that have to handle a large number of customer inquiries and are therefore often operated by external service providers.

How can the Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score be measured?

The Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score is measured by a survey that often consists of a single question, but oc­ca­sion­ally more. This question can be something along the lines of:

“How satisfied were you with your buying ex­per­i­ence?”

The customer is given the op­por­tun­ity to answer this question with the means of a scale. They can usually choose between the values of 1 to 3 or 1 to 5, and in some cases from 1 to 10.

Larger scales are not always the better choice. For example, psy­cho­logy studies have found that people from countries with a high value of in­di­vidu­al­ism (for example, the US) often rate products and services as su­per­lat­ives like “fantastic” or “awful”. In contrast, people from countries with more col­lect­ive values (such as China) tend to make milder judge­ments such as “good” or “in­suf­fi­cient”. Such cultural biases can result in false survey results. This is why smaller scales reflect the mood of a variety of in­ter­na­tion­al customers much better, which is why some companies prefer a system with coloured emojis: green stands for satisfied, yellow for neutral, and red for dis­sat­is­fied.

Common chal­lenges of the CSAT survey

There are basically no limits when it comes to designing a CSAT survey. Ideally, it should be re­l­at­ively short and easy to un­der­stand. In addition, it is also advisable to formulate your question(s) to refer to a longer period of time (including later surveys) so that the results can be compared. If you also include a text box in the survey where re­spond­ents can provide more detailed feedback, you will get ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion to help you interpret the data better.

Choosing the right time for data col­lec­tion is extremely important. Since it is a matter of measuring a volatile and situation-dependent mood, your CSAT survey should take place directly after an in­ter­ac­tion with your company. This increases the like­li­hood of the customer re­mem­ber­ing the in­ter­ac­tion with your company well. For example, a customer sat­is­fac­tion survey could be conducted after the com­ple­tion of an order process via an app, or after a live chat with customer support on your homepage, or at the end of reading an in­form­at­ive article.

However, it makes less sense to invite the customer via email to complete a survey weeks or even months after the initial in­ter­ac­tion. Many companies are guilty of this and use a method of con­tact­ing their customers according to a fixed schedule or before a sub­scrip­tion expires. However, with the time that has passed, most customers are then unable to reliably remember how satisfied they were with the company’s per­form­ance.

Cal­cu­lat­ing the Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score

The Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score is prac­tic­ally the average rating of your company based on your customers’ survey responses. With just numeric scales, the average score can easily be cal­cu­lated by dividing the sum of all scores by their number. If you use a simpler system that just provides answers like “satisfied”, “neutral”, and “dis­sat­is­fied”, you can still easily calculate the CSAT per­cent­age, i.e. the total per­cent­age of satisfied customers. All you have to do is divide the number of positive ratings by the number of ratings and multiply it by 100.

Tip

The cal­cu­la­tion of the CSAT is very simple, but you can also use external tools such as Ques­tionPro or HubSpot.

What are the benefits of the CSAT?

The CSAT survey is a simple method of finding out how satisfied your customers are with, for example, the pur­chas­ing process or certain business per­form­ances. It is re­l­at­ively in­ex­pens­ive to implement and provides easy-to-un­der­stand data about customer opinion and possible problems. The design and rating scale can be quickly and easily adapted to your target group.

CSAT surveys also show your customers that you take their needs and feedback on products and services seriously. You can reinforce this positive im­pres­sion by regularly informing them about in­nov­a­tions or changes that you have made based on their feedback.

Since a CSAT survey takes very little time, it can be used more than once and at various stages of the customer journey. This allows you to find out about customer sat­is­fac­tion at numerous key moments of the customer lifecycle and, for example, receive ratings on customer advice, the pur­chas­ing process, product quality, new features or customer support. If the customer was dis­sat­is­fied for any reason, it is then easier to determine where exactly the problem occurred and how to take action in order to make the buying ex­per­i­ence more enjoyable in the future. Ex­per­i­ence has shown that short CSAT surveys achieve higher response rates than emails with an in­teg­rated link.

What are the dis­ad­vant­ages of the CSAT and how can they be addressed?

The basic problem with any type of sat­is­fac­tion survey is that it requires ad­di­tion­al effort from the customer, which may not appeal so much to the customer. Under these cir­cum­stances, it can prove difficult to obtain valid samples. Often, the customers that complete surveys are those that want to vent about a defective product or an un­friendly customer support member. Also, even if this is not the case, customers who are satisfied or feel neutral about a product or service rarely complete such surveys. This in­ev­it­ably results in falsified results in which, certain customer groups are con­sidered more strongly than others. The same happens when sat­is­fac­tion surveys do not cover all stages of the customer lifecycle.

Now CSAT surveys have the advantage of being quick and easy to carry out and allowing instant con­clu­sions to be drawn about the emotional state of the customer directly after an in­ter­ac­tion. However, this advantage also conceals some of the biggest weak­nesses of the Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score: the queried values are extremely volatile snapshots that depend on how the customer feels on a par­tic­u­lar day. The customer may simply not have had enough time to com­pre­hens­ively assess the in­ter­ac­tion with your company. They therefore usually react spon­tan­eously and emo­tion­ally to such surveys.

Ad­di­tion­ally, ‘sat­is­fac­tion’ in itself is a very sub­ject­ive term and does not mean the same thing for every customer. This also makes it difficult to compare Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Scores from different companies and in­dus­tries (keyword: bench­mark­ing).

Thus, the CSAT is unable to provide a com­pre­hens­ive overview of customer sat­is­fac­tion. Instead, it must be seen as part of a more complex overall picture and can only be used in com­bin­a­tion with other meas­ure­ment models to provide a mean­ing­ful analysis. In addition to extensive email surveys and social media mon­it­or­ing, many companies also use the following three metrics:

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): this KPI is often used together with, or as an al­tern­at­ive to, the CSAT. With the basic question ‘would you recommend the company to others?’, it captures the overall pro­por­tions of fans and critics of your company. The NPS makes it possible to predict concrete be­ha­vi­our­al in­ten­tions of your customers and to assess their loyalty to your company.
  • Customer Effort Scores (CES): the CES records the effort required by the customers to resolve their issue. For example, the time it took to navigate your homepage, or the number of calls and emails it took to resolve a problem, both play a role.
  • Things Gone Wrong (TGW): this metric con­cen­trates on the dis­sat­is­fac­tion of the customers. It relates the frequency of com­plaints to the total number of in­ter­ac­tions. This metric allows you to quickly identify where your company needs the most im­prove­ment.

Con­clu­sion: The CSAT alone is not enough

The Customer Sat­is­fac­tion Score measures the sat­is­fac­tion of your customers, the Net Promoter Score the loyalty of your customers, the Customer Effort Score the effort required during the in­ter­ac­tion with your company. While all of these KPIs are in­ter­re­lated, less effort means more sat­is­fac­tion and more sat­is­fac­tion promotes loyalty. From this per­spect­ive, it is obvious that the CSAT alone is not enough to provide a clear picture of how your customers evaluate your company’s per­form­ance. If you want reliable data about your customers and their attitude to your business per­form­ance, you should combine several metrics. In this way, you can tailor the customer journey, the pur­chas­ing process and the actual offer to consumers in the best possible way - and new customers quickly become satisfied regular customers.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.

Go to Main Menu