When working in customer service, you probably want to make sure your customers have positive experiences with your brand and products. Instead of assuming you did everything right, turn to the data – that means knowing your CSAT score.
In this article we will consider:
- What does the CSAT score mean?
- What can be considered a good CSAT score.
- How to measure your CSAT score and CSAT score formula.
- Difference between NPS and CSAT scores.
- How can you improve your business’s CSAT score?
Let’s dive right in.
What is the CSAT score?
So, first things first: What does the CSAT score mean?
CSAT stands for “customer satisfaction”. So a CSAT score is a customer service metric that reflects customer sentiment, experience, and satisfaction with your brand. It is a way of qualitatively showing how customers perceive their experience with your brand or products. It is a useful Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that your business can monitor because it is qualitative.
Measuring your CSAT score is important for several reasons:
- You will have data that reflects whether your customers are satisfied (or dissatisfied) with your brand.
- If your CSAT score could be higher, you know where you can make improvements.
- If your CSAT score is good, you can use it in your marketing materials to promote your business and show how it stands out from your competitors.
- If you know where customers are having trouble with your brand or products, you can fix the trouble spots before they lose customer loyalty.
What is a good CSAT score?
Basically, it depends! A good CSAT score varies by industry.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) measures average CSAT scores across 10 different industries. According to 2020 data, if you score above 80%, you are doing really well no matter what industry your business is in.
On the other hand, regardless of your industry, if your CSAT score is below 60%, there is a lot of room for improvement.
Source: ACSI
But really, what counts as a good CSAT score will depend on where your business starts. In other words, focus on your own business first. Gather feedback through surveys and social media, stay on top of metrics, and identify room for improvements.
Then, compare past CSAT scores with current scores to make sure you’re improving or staying consistently high. This way, you will have data driving new business decisions.
CSAT score scale
Converting an emotion into a number involves creating an emotion that is simple and not time consuming! – questionnaire consisting of only one or two questions.
This survey will include a CSAT score scale that asks customers to rate their shopping experience with your brand or their perception of a product they purchased. You give customers a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents the worst possible experience and 5 represents the best.
Maybe the CSAT score scale is just numbers from 1 to 5. But scale can also be displayed creatively. For example, Amazon encourages buyers to review products using the star scale:
Or you can view the scale using emojis that represent 5 emotions, from very unhappy to very satisfied.
Follow these helpful tips to get customers to share their experiences and therefore get reliable data to help determine your CSAT score:
- Be specific in your questions. Make sure they are open-ended questions and not yes/no questions. Also, make sure they specifically address the experience you want to collect data from. For example, “How satisfied were you with your experience at ABC Cafe?” Ask it. or “Does the product meet your expectations?”
- Keep it short. You want customers to be responsive so you can get a reflective CSAT score, so focus on just one or two customer experience touchpoints.
- Keep the CSAT score on a scale of 1 to 5. This makes it easier for your customers and doesn’t overwhelm them with options. But it also provides sufficient range to provide you with quality data.
- Leave space for open-ended comments. While this won’t contribute to the CSAT score, it can be helpful if clients want to provide clear examples of what made their experience positive or negative. A way to get direct feedback and make specific plans going forward.
How can you measure your CSAT score?
If you want to know how to measure your CSAT score, you need to know the CSAT score formula.
Simply, calculating your CSAT score means calculating a percentage based on the feedback you collect in customer surveys. Since this is a percentage, the score will range from 0 to 100.
Step 1: Add up the number of satisfied responses.
Consider that if they rank your customers 4 or 5, they are satisfied with your brand. So, if you have 30 customers ranked 4th on the CSAT score scale and 50 customers ranked 5th, that brings your total to 80.
Step 2: Divide this number by all the responses you receive.
Maybe your survey received a total of 112 responses. Divide 80 by 112 for a value of 0.71.
Step 3: Multiply by 100.
This gives you the percentage. So according to this example, the CSAT score would be 71.
What is the difference between CSAT score and NPS score?
NPS and CSAT scores are not the same.
NPS stands for “net promoter score”. Like the CSAT score, the NPS score is based on a customer survey and qualifies those responses. But unlike the CSAT score, it’s a measure of how likely customers are to recommend your business’s products or services to others, not a direct reflection of their own experience.
Also, like the CSAT score, the NPS score uses a score scale to determine these metrics. Most NPS surveys ask customers to rate their likelihood of recommending your brand on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 means they are confident they will recommend you, 1 means they have no chance to recommend you.
Also a different formula for calculating NPS score. To calculate the NPS score, subtract the percentage of detractors (those scoring 0 to 6) from the percentage of promoters (rated 9 and 10):
Interested in other customer service metrics that are useful to monitor? Here are 14 metrics to watch and a free reporting template.
5 tips to improve your CSAT score
If your brand’s CSAT score isn’t exactly where you want it to be, these 5 tips will help.
Respond to issues quickly and professionally
As a customer service manager, you will hear if someone is dissatisfied with their experience or if they are uncomfortable with your product. Maybe the customer will share this sentiment through a social media post, a Google My Business review, or a DM.
Whatever happens, don’t dwell on the subject. Handle things quickly and professionally. One way to always ensure professionalism is to make sure you create brand guidelines for your social media channels that address things like response time, tone, and protocol for escalating issues.
Similarly, if your brand is getting the same questions over and over, take the time to publicly show answers to FAQs. For example, Instagram Highlights are great for posting FAQs:
Source: hello bello
Have dedicated customer support channels on social media
Make it easy for your customers to voice their complaints or ask questions. In addition to having a dedicated email address for customer support, it can be helpful to have dedicated customer support channels on social media. This way, you can distinguish support calls from more general requests and make it easier for your brand to respond quickly and accurately.
Brands that do this include Microsoft:
Snapchat:
And Twitter:
Identify customer conversations
If your brand is active on social media, consider using Moyens I/O’s social listening feeds. This helps you monitor multiple social networks and “hear” conversations happening around your brand. And that way, you can quickly handle support requests even if you’re not tagged.
Find out more here:
Manage customer messages in one place
A customer service tool like Sparkcentral by Moyens I/O makes it easy to manage customer messages. Its features include AI-powered chatbots to improve response times, and automated message delivery to help manage high volumes of inbound tickets across multiple channels, including:
- SMS
- excitement
- Telegram
- And more!
Consider implementing SMS marketing
Finally, consider incorporating SMS marketing into your business’s marketing strategy. This allows brands to interact with customers directly via text. In terms of increasing customer satisfaction, this helps customers feel taken care of quickly by giving them direct access to your customer service representatives.
Save time building an efficient customer support system with Sparkcentral by Moyens I/O. Quickly respond to questions and complaints across channels, create tickets, and work with chatbots from a single dashboard. Try it for free today.
