Your customers have a huge impact on the success of your business. 

A single negative review can change the way people perceive your business, which leads to low customer satisfaction levels. These unhappy customers can not only make you lose revenue but also harm your brand’s image. 

In fact, according to a Salesforce report, nearly 90% of buyers say that the experience a business provides matters just as much as their products or services. 

That’s one of the main reasons why Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT) are so important when it comes to measuring customer happiness and meeting their expectations. 

In this article, learn what a CSAT score is, its pros and cons, how to calculate it, and so much more. 

What Is a CSAT Score?

A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a methodology that measures how happy clients are with your products or services and the overall interaction with your brand. 

Think of CSAT as a report card where you’re graded by customers on your professionalism, responsiveness, knowledge, etc. Their purpose is to collect feedback on areas that need improvement through a survey that asks a simple question: How satisfied were you with our product/service/brand?

Customers rate their answers on a numeric scale (one to three, one to five, and one to ten range), but you can also use verbal indicators (unsatisfied, neutral, very satisfied) or emojis and stars. 

Moreover, you can use these surveys at any point in the customer’s journey to gain insight into how happy they are with their business. 

What Are The Benefits Of Measuring Customer Satisfaction?

CSAT is a very popular way to measure customer success. 

According to Harvard Business Review, 80% of businesses use customer satisfaction scores as their primary metric for improving experiences.

The big question is: why? Here are a few of the reasons: 

• Understand your customers better: It’s important to know what your clients expect from you so you can meet those expectations better. By gathering data on their pain points or bottlenecks, you can better understand what your customers want. 
• Improve the buyer experience: The point of gathering these insights through surveys is not to make your team feel bad but to make improvements in the areas that matter. While you have your own standards and expectations, customers have the ultimate say in whether they’re satisfied with your products or not. 
• Boost customer loyalty: The truth is, even if you make a mistake, 78% of customers will still do business with you if they receive excellent customer service. Through CSAT score, you can work on improving the experiences and improve customer loyalty as a result. 
• Set yourself apart from the competition: The marketing landscape is busy with thousands of companies that try to set themselves apart. Most might be doing it through their content, but they neglect the client aspect of their business. You can be different and offer a client journey that’s truly perfect. 
• Reduce churn: Attracting new clients is more expensive than holding onto existing ones. But it’s hard to figure out who’s new and who stuck with you the whole journey without a CSAT survey. As a result, it can help you identify who’s unhappy with your services before they leave and engage them at crucial points in their journey.

How to Calculate the CSAT Score?

It’s relatively easy to calculate your CSAT score. What you need to do is divide the number of positive responses by the total number of responses you got times one hundred. 

The final result you get is the percentage of customers who are pleased with the experience you provide. Here’s what the formula looks like: 

CSAT = (Total number of positive answers) / (Total number of responses) x 100

Let’s also exemplify this. You have 100 people who rate their experience five or four stars. If you divide the total number of positive responses to the total number of responses, your final score would be around 80%. 

It’s a good number, but there’s still room for improvement. What this CSAT score shows is that people are overall satisfied with your services, but maybe there are some areas that you still need to work on. 

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What Is a Good Customer Satisfaction Score?

Obviously, the ideal — and best — CSAT score is 100%. However, it’s not that easy to attain even if it should be your goal. This mostly happens because CSAT scores aren’t an exact science, especially since every business, product, or industry is unique. 

In general, anything lower than 50% is less desirable. It means that half of your customers aren’t satisfied with the experience you’re giving them. The sweet spot is anything above 70%, showing that your customers are satisfied with your product or service. 

CSAT score benchmarks by industry

Every industry has its own CSAT score average. 

For instance, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the customer satisfaction percentage for General Merchandise Retailers is 77% in 2024. 

Let’s look at some other examples: 

• Supermarket: 79%
• Online Retailers: 80%
• Automobiles: 80%
• Full-Service Restaurants: 84%
• Airlines: 77%
• Subscription TV Service: 70%
• Social Media: 74%

What you can notice is that the average satisfaction level is around 70 - 80%. It means that four in five clients give you a positive response rather than a neutral or negative one. 

When Should You Use the CSAT Score?

You can ask people for feedback at any point in their journey. But timing is key. Waiting for too long will erase your customers’ experience with you and too little will intimidate them. 

So, when exactly should you use the CSAT score? Typically: 

• After customer support — After a discussion with your customers over the phone, it feels natural to ask for feedback. The interaction is freshly imprinted in the person’s mind and they can assess aspects such as quality of communication, speed, issue resolution, etc. This measures your agent’s ability to provide support. 
• Prior to a renewal — This tactic works best if you offer subscriptions to your customers. For instance, you can ask clients for feedback a few months before they renew their subscription. This way, you can solve any problems they might have that prevent them from renewing their subscription. 
• After product releases — You can send people a survey after they interact with a demo or test a new product feature. This allows you to see what works and report any possible frustrations. 

There are plenty of opportunities to use CSAT surveys to gauge what your customers are feeling. You need to find the right timing that’ll yield the most benefits for you.

What Are the Pros and Cons of the CSAT Score?

Like every good thing in life, a CSAT score comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. 

Let’s start with the pros. 

CSAT pros

CSAT surveys are good because they’re: 

✅ Easy to measure —  Due to their short and intuitive nature, it’s easy to capture the data you need with just one question. 

✅ Customizable — CSAT scores give you the flexibility to match the context of your question by using numeric rating scales, stars, emojis; whatever your audience wants. 

✅ Able to generate high response rates — Since they’re so simple, CSAT scores provides data that you can analyze quickly. 

CSAT cons

Here are the reasons why people are against CSAT scores: 

❌ Reflect short-term impressions — The CSAT score is based on the last (and freshest) interaction a customer has with your company, which doesn’t reflect their overall experience. 

❌ Can be the subject of bias — Because it’s self-reporting, CSAT surveys are vulnerable to bias and ambiguity, especially since the score average differs by industry.

❌ Are limited in depth — People respond to these surveys based on their feelings and moods at the moment, so it doesn’t really capture the nuance of the experience. 

How to Design an Effective CSAT Survey?

If you want to design effective CSAT surveys, here’s what you need to do: 

1. Know your objectives

The first step is to set a goal for the survey. Why are you conducting it? Is it to measure customer satisfaction, gather feedback for a particular feature, or simply find out what you need to improve? 

Once you do find your purpose, try to set your key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can measure to see if your efforts are worth it. Think of KPIs such as customer churn rates, retention rates, and more. 

2. Understand your audience

Another thing to consider when creating effective CSAT surveys is to identify who your target demographic is. Who is your audience? Think of things like age, location, and preferences. 

Knowing this about your target audience helps you create a survey relevant to them and allows you to tailor questions to their preferences. If your clients prefer a certain communication style, then make sure to find the questions that are relevant to their experience. 

Moreover, try to use language that’s familiar to your customers, aka it should align with your customers’ language proficiency. The reason why you should do this is to boost understanding and response rate. 

3. Keep it simple

CSAT surveys are super simple. That’s what characterizes them best and you should strive to keep them that way. It’s tempting to ask customers about every aspect of their journey, but chances are they’re gonna get intimidated and won’t spend that long on each question. 

Even if you add 10 questions to your CSAT survey, try to make them as clear and straightforward as possible. Don’t use long sentences or complicated words that will only confuse your users. 

4. Choose the right types of questions

There are many types of questions to choose from, such as multiple-choice, sliders, image-based questions, etc. Mixing them up will keep respondents on their toes and interested in answering your survey. 

Plus, combining image-based questions with multiple-choice questions will prove to be a more engaging experience for your users and you avoid survey fatigue, which is the frustration people feel when asked to complete too many (boring) surveys. 

When it comes to questions, try to have both open-ended and closed-ended questions. They’re both essential to getting comprehensive feedback. What do they mean?

Open-ended questions allow customers to leave their thoughts in their own words, offering more qualitative insights. On the other hand, closed-ended questions are all about quantifiable data used to identify patterns. 

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5. Offer clear instructions and progress bars

To create a smoother experience, it’s best to have visual aids like progress bars that show users how far along they are in the survey. This removes the uncertainty from the process, as users know exactly how much they have till they complete the survey. 

Besides, try to give clear instructions to streamline navigation. Your survey-takers should know exactly what to do to complete the survey, which also acts as encouragement to finish it. 

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What Are Some CSAT Best Practices?

To make your CSAT surveys truly shine, here are some tips to make them so: 

• Use familiar language: While people have different levels of language proficiency, everyone understands familiar language. For example, you can ask consumers from the United States what their favorite football team is, but rephrase the question if you cater to another culture. 
• Provide a logical flow: Make sure your survey makes sense and is logical. Group similar questions together (e.g., if you’re talking about a certain product feature) to maintain coherence. Try to personalize your survey based on your customers’ previous surveys and even tailor it to the individual to enhance engagement. 
• Text fields should not be mandatory: No one likes mandatory text fields, even if they’re a great source of feedback and data. If you make them mandatory, people will find them annoying and probably won’t give very useful suggestions. But if they’re optional, those who really want to see you succeed will be more than eager to complete the text field. 
• Include a N/A option: Yes, we know you want to get a concrete answer to every question. But sometimes it’s important to have an “I don’t know” option for the clients that don’t feel the question is relevant to them. As a result, you’ll only get actionable feedback instead of half-hearted responses. 
• White label the survey: Try not to take a template and use it as it is. A survey that reflects your brand’s look and has your logo and colors will build a sense of trust with your respondents. People will see that the survey is coming from you and will feel more encouraged to share their thoughts. 
• Make it mobile-friendly: Most people use their phones to answer surveys, so make sure they’re easy to navigate. What you need to do is make sure the survey adjusts to various screen sizes and that they’re accessible to diverse audiences. 
• Pre-test the survey: Before you release the survey to the public, pre-test it so you can catch potential issues or errors. Doing so ensures you offer a seamless experience right from the start — and shows that you’re committed to quality. 
• Offer incentives: Everyone loves presents! So why not offer rewards or incentives for participating in your surveys? It doesn’t have to be something expensive. A discount on their next purchase or a gift card can motivate even the most reluctant customer to take the survey. 
• Gather feedback: Maybe you won’t nail your first survey, but you can surely improve the next one. Gathering feedback from past surveys will ensure your future ones will be perfect. Moreover, acting on feedback shows customers that you take them seriously and are willing to listen to their suggestions. 

Over To You!

CSAT scores can impact how people view your business and make or break your reputation. Measuring your customer satisfaction levels is the only way to make sure your audience is happy with your services and keep them loyal for a long time. 

But you know what else you need to take care of? Your knowledge base. 

Guru can help you with that! This AI-driven company knowledge platform is the perfect solution for getting instant answers anywhere, whether you’re working in Slack, ChatGPT, or Airtable. 

See how Guru works by signing up for it today. 

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