We know that customer satisfaction is essential for your business to thrive. But how do you measure customer satisfaction, and where do you start to analyse how well you're doing in this area? One excellent way to measure customer satisfaction in your company is to use the CSAT metric.
Although there are other metrics you can also use to measure customer satisfaction, this article will focus primarily on CSAT, how it works and how it can improve customer satisfaction.
CSAT is the metric used to measure customer satisfaction. A CSAT can measure satisfaction with a product, service or business and is not limited to one satisfaction area. You can use it to measure various areas, including the purchase experience or customer service.
When you use CSAT to measure satisfaction, it involves a rating scale. For example, you might ask a customer how satisfied they were with the customer service during their last purchase. They can respond using a scale, eg, 1–10, 1–5 or 1–3.
You can then review the scores by adding the number of positive scores together. Then divide the total by the number of responses and multiply by 100. The number will show the percentage of satisfied customers.
For example:
How satisfied were you with your last purchase from us? (Responses on a scale from 1, Very Dissatisfied, to 10, Very Satisfied).
If 50 people responded and 30 gave positive scores, then your CSAT score would be 60% (divide the 30 positive responses by the 50 total responses and multiply by 100).
While you may think high scores, for example, over 80%, mean that you have already achieved high service, you also need to compare your scores. If you can access the average scores across your industry, you can compare them to your competition.
But, of course, you still have some work to do if they score 90% and above! Ideally, you want to work towards achieving a higher score than your industry average.
The more customer feedback you receive, the more you'll know about current satisfaction levels, and you should gain more transparency about what you need to do to increase satisfaction. You can gather CSAT feedback quickly and easily by adding surveys to customer emails, on your website or on social media so that customers can easily access and complete the survey.
Another acronym associated with customer satisfaction metrics is the NPS (Net Promoter Score). While CSAT focuses on satisfaction with your business during a purchase, interaction or service, the NPS focuses on customer loyalty, how likely they are to stay with you and whether they would recommend you to others.
The scoring for NPS might look like this:
How likely are you to recommend our services to a friend or family?
0–6—these respondents are called Detractors and are unhappy customers.
7–8—these are the Passive customers who are somewhat satisfied.
9–10—these are the Promotors who are happy, loyal customers who are likely to recommend you.
Performance evaluation—CSAT metrics can be used to evaluate employee performance. If you review the metrics and find you have a high customer satisfaction score, you can be confident that your customer-facing teams are performing well to keep customers happy. You can look at specific statistics around customer feedback times, outstanding customer queries or complaints and completed resolutions.
Remove speculation—using metrics from CSAT, you get genuine feedback rather than speculation. For example, you might guess that your business could be doing better in a particular area, but unless you ask your audience, you won't really know.
Reduced turnover—when you ask customer survey questions and act on feedback, customers may feel more loyalty towards you and take comfort from the fact that you are listening to what they're saying. New customers can cost as much as five times more than retaining an existing customer, so don’t lose them!
CSAT surveys are an effective way to gather quick feedback from your customers. The rating scales make response time short and may encourage customers to respond. Once you have calculated your CSAT score, you can use this to highlight your worth to customers and rise above the competition.
At Momentive, our product SurveyMonkey can help you to collect feedback and identify consumer segmentation.
Sign-up for free to find out more about how CSAT can help your business to shine.
Think of your question as the best question to gauge customer satisfaction. First, consider your objective (ie, are you looking to understand more about the purchasing experience or how customer questions are solved), and then choose a relevant question that will ultimately gain the information you need. Always put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about what they may provide valuable feedback on.
CSATs tend to ask one rating question. For example, a CSAT might ask how you found the product on a scale of one to five. This will be quick for the customer to answer and can provide many ratings. You can include follow-up questions to gain further detail, but these may get a lower response rate.
It depends on the score! High scores can be great to shout about and may attract potential customers and help to retain existing customers. In addition, by publishing high scores, you may stand out from the competition.
Absolutely! For example, if you deliver a product, you could follow up with a CSAT survey to check service or delivery. Later, you can follow up with an NSP survey to ask how likely the customer is to recommend the product.