What Is CSAT?

What Is CSAT?

CSAT stands for Customer Satisfaction. The metric measures short-term happiness, or how a customer feels about a specific service or product.  Unlike NPS, it does not address how a customer feels about a company as a whole.

CSAT is an excellent way to measure the quality of a company’s particular products or services. Now that you know what CSAT is, let’s review how the metric works.

How CSAT Works

To measure CSAT, call center agents need to ask one basic survey question after helping customers:

“How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service [or product] you received?”

This question will vary since it is aimed at a specific service or product – not satisfaction for the whole entire company. Other CSAT surveys will include multiple questions to get a better sense of the customer experience. However, listing too many questions could prevent customers from wanting to participate.

Call centers typically use a 1-5 rating with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied. Respondents are asked to rate their experience using this scale, although scales can vary by company. The scores are then averaged and converted into a percentage with 0% being complete dissatisfaction and 100% being complete satisfaction.

Most CSAT surveys will provide an optional comment field where customers can offer a reason for giving the score that they did. This helps call centers understand what actions they should take to improve satisfaction.

However, it is also important to understand the limitations of CSATs. The most typical CSAT responses come from customers who are very satisfied or very dissatisfied, giving you an incomplete view of your entire customer base. CSAT scores are just one metric to track, but it should not be the only metric you track.

Top CSAT Benefits

CSAT metrics help companies better understand how they are servicing their clients and determine what areas need improvement. By implementing CSAT metrics, you’ll gain the following benefits:

1. Understand How Products & Services Are Received

If you don’t measure your CSAT score, you’ll never really know how your customers feel about what you’re offering. And if you don’t know how customers feel about specific service levels or products, you have no way of identifying patterns and understanding which areas need improvement and which areas are working.

2. Understand How Internal Changes Impact Customer Satisfaction

CSATs can help companies understand if any changes to employee trainings or new business procedures are impacting customer satisfaction levels. For example, if a new type of software is implemented and customer satisfaction increases, companies can infer that the new technology has had positive results. If a new procedure is introduced at the latest employee training that results in lower CSAT scores, then companies can infer that the new procedure isn’t working.

3. Better Management

It’s the job of call center agents to keep customers happy. But without surveying customers, it’s hard to know if they are succeeding or not. By tracking CSAT, managers can use the information collected to lead teams of agents more effectively.

For example, by looking at the long-term trend of your customer satisfaction score, you can analyze the effectiveness of your service over time. If your CSAT score is increasing over time, that’s great! It means you’re continually keeping callers happy. But if your CSAT score is decreasing, it’s a sign that you’re doing something wrong and need to offer your team of agents with some new direction.

Improving Your CSAT Score

Now that you understand some of the key benefits to measuring CSAT, we’ll go over ways you can work to improve your CSAT score:

1. Identify Reasons Customers Aren’t Taking the Survey

Improving your CSAT score starts with making sure the survey is designed appropriately. Make sure the survey is simple and easy for customers to respond to. You can use the above question as an example for just how basic you can get. Before working to improve your CSAT score, collect info on how many people are actually answering surveys and what you could do to improve the survey experience. Consider offering the survey across all of your communication channels.

2. End on a Positive Note

After an unhappy customer finishes the survey, be sure to end on a positive note. Agents should express genuine concern and make an effort to improve the customer experience. This way, even dissatisfied customers may change their mind and consider using the product or service in the future.

3. Collect Feedback

Ask for constructive criticism so that you can gain an understanding into why the customer is unhappy and what would have made the experience better.

If you still aren’t getting detailed answers that provide value, try asking more specific, detailed questions, so that you can pinpoint exactly what the issue is. Follow up questions give customers the chance to explain why they gave the score they did and can help guide a company’s next steps. Some customers might even offer ideas for implementing changes that improve customer experience for your larger customer base.

Why CSAT Scores Matter

Once you have an understanding of why a customer is dissatisfied, take action and implement the steps needed to improve future experiences. CSATs paired with customer effort scores and customer lifetime value measurements can provide the guidance you need to make meaningful change. They can help you meet industry benchmarks and improve the way you engage your customers.

Measuring CSAT is crucial if companies want to identify how customers are receiving particular products or interactions within a company. It helps companies understand exactly what’s working, what’s not, and what they can do to make improvements.