Customer satisfaction (CSAT) evaluates the ability of businesses to meet customer expectations. CSAT, usually expressed as a percentage-based CSAT score, is an indication of how happy customers are with their product, service, or support experience at a company. By measuring customer satisfaction, companies can keep tabs on trends and move up rating scales.
Benefits of Measuring Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction in general is a business priority, as happy customers are returning customers. Measuring the CSAT metric in the contact center gives organizations a concrete way to understand overall customer experience satisfaction and its key drivers. This direct input from the customer trumps any market study, as your team can rely on firsthand, actionable knowledge of demand and customer expectations.
Benefits of measuring CSAT include:
- Greater understanding of customer needs
- Minimized business risks and costs of customer dissatisfaction such as loss of sales and reduction in market share
- Positive brand image and reputation, which increases customer loyalty
- Word-of-mouth marketing from customer to product alignment
- Customer touchpoint efficiency
How Do You Measure CSAT?
To measure CSAT scores, conduct customer satisfaction surveys requesting grades for an interaction or business offering over pre-defined options, often on a scale from 1 to 5, or 1 to 10, such as:
- Very satisfied for scores 9 and 10
- Satisfied for scores between 6 and 8
- Not satisfied for scores 4 and 5
- Very unsatisfied for scores between 1 and 3
In addition, you can also provide an option for customers to share their thoughts on a touchpoint or product and areas of improvement. Customer feedback helps teams understand pain points, which can be used to improve products, customer service, and marketing strategies.
What is a CSAT Score?
CSAT scores, then, are a percentage-based the level of satisfaction customers feel with products, services, and other interactions in the course of a transaction. Organizations can leverage CSAT scores and other tools to determine the performance of their contact center and boost customer success.
Calculating CSAT Scores
To calculate and track your contact center’s overall CSAT score, focus on the percentage of customers who responded positively. Typically, this means those who rated their experience as ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Very Satisfied’ (often scores of 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale, or 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale). Here’s the formula:
(Number of Satisfied/Very Satisfied Responses / Total Number of Responses) x 100 = CSAT Score (%)
For example, if you received 100 responses and 80 were ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Very Satisfied’, your CSAT score would be (80/100) x 100 = 80%
What is a Good CSAT Score?
Determining a “good” CSAT score can vary depending on your industry and specific business goals. However, generally:
- Above 80%: This is considered excellent and indicates a high level of customer satisfaction.
- Between 70% and 80%: This is a good score and suggests that most customers are happy, but there’s room for improvement.
- Between 60% and 70%: This indicates that a significant portion of customers are not fully satisfied, and attention is needed to address pain points.
- Below 60%: This signals serious customer dissatisfaction and requires urgent action to identify and resolve issues.
While these general guidelines are a good place to start, it’s crucial to benchmark your CSAT score against industry standards and your own historical data. For US-based businesses, the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a national cross-industry measure of CSAT, is an indispensable resource.
Tips to Improve CSAT Customer Service Responses
CSAT scores help organizations determine optimal agent performance and training needs. To encourage customers to participate in CSAT surveys, consider some of the following strategies:
- Offer incentives such as coupon codes, an entry in a giveaway, special discounts, and free gifts.
- Experiment with different question formats such as five-star ratings, polls, and sliders.
- Personalize survey responses by making questions more targeted to specific parts of a customer journey such as the purchase of a product and closing of a ticket.
- Make surveys short and direct by limiting the number of questions and options.
Boost Customer Satisfaction with Modern, Automated Quality Management
To unify customer experiences and ensure alignment of all customer touchpoints, contact centers need a leading quality management solution like Calabrio ONE.
Calabrio ONE delivers AI-driven, automated quality management that enables businesses to set a standard of excellence across support teams with intuitive tools to monitor, analyze, and score the quality of every customer interaction.
Learn more about how Calabrio ONE can deliver a comprehensive view of customer interactions—and help your contact center provide exceptional customer experiences. Book a demo today.
