Determine Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) with QuestionPro. Definition, example, evaluation, live online demo.

With the Customer Satisfaction Score you can quickly and easily determine the level of customer satisfaction. To do this, use QuestionPro and the predefined CSAT question.

Definition: Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

What is the Customer Satisfaction Score?

The Customer Satisfaction Score (abbreviation: CSAT) is, similar to the Customer Effort Score and the Net Promoter Score, a key performance indicator that indicates the degree of satisfaction of a company's customers. While customer satisfaction can only be derived indirectly by means of the Customer Effort Score and Net Promoter Score, the aim of the Customer Satisfaction Score is the direct measurement and representation of customer satisfaction, in a nutshell.

How is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) determined?

Determining the key figure "CSAT" is relatively simple, as this is basically asked via a single question and by means of very direct questioning within a customer survey or touchpoint analysis, as follows

"Looking back on all of your experiences with our company, our products and services: How satisfied are you?"

Possible answer variants for the CSAT determination

As a rule, companies give their customers 5 answer options by means of a single-choice question:

▢ very satisfied
▢ satisfied
▢ I don't know / neutral
▢ dissatisfied
▢ very dissatisfied

To avoid the so-called "mean trap", i.e. the likelihood that customers not infrequently tend to use the middle answer option, some companies also use 4 or 6 answer options to determine the CSAT, such as in the following examples:

Basically, all variants are useful for determining the CSAT. However, one should bear in mind that especially in the case of "mobile surveys", i.e. customer surveys or touchpoint analyses that are most likely to be answered via smartphone, the questionnaire and the corresponding answer options should be designed as concisely and clearly as possible in order to obtain the highest possible number of CSAT feedback.

Numerical values ​​for the CSAT determination

Another variant for determining a CSAT score is the possibility of using a 10-number scale, similar to that of the Net Promoter Score, where 1 represents the worst and 10 the best rating.

▢ 1 ▢ 2 ▢ 3 ▢ 4 ▢ 5 ▢ 6 ▢ 7 ▢ 8 ▢ 9 ▢ 10

Answer options via symbols

Of course, symbols are also very popular for determining the CSAT. The preferred variants are, for example, asterisks or smileys.

But we have also encountered the use of 2 response options to determine the Customer Satisfaction Score via Like/Dislike symbols. This can look like the following:

What makes the Customer Satisfaction Score so valuable and important?

As already described above, the question to determine the CSAT is very pointed. Without further ado, customers are confronted with it and have to react to it ad hoc, quasi from a "Top Of Mind" situation, which guarantees unfiltered and honest feedback. And it is precisely this that makes the CSAT a very important indicator of whether your employees are ensuring that your company's customers are satisfied and that they are at the centre of all their thoughts and actions.

CSAT calculation: How to determine the Customer Satisfaction Score

There are different calculation models for determining the CSAT, whereby the following calculation has become established: Number of satisfied customers multiplied by 100 divided by the number of all respondents.

Please note that for any benchmarking it is necessary that the published CSAT values ​​with which you compare the CSAT values ​​of your company were determined on the same basis of calculation.

Reasons and advantages for determining customer satisfaction using the Customer Satisfaction Score

Simple use of the CSAT question

The Customer Satisfaction Score is very easy to determine through a single question. This simplicity makes the use of the CSAT question ideal for micro-surveys in the context of touchpoint analyses. So you don't have to ask umpteen questions to find out if your customers are satisfied.

Easy evaluation of the CSAT score

As simple as the application of the Customer Satisfaction Score is within a questionnaire, so is the evaluation, as there is little to no room for interpretation here due to the clarity of the question. At the end of this article you will find a link to a sample CSAT questionnaire including evaluation. The following CSAT sample evaluation gives you a first impression of the simplicity.

Interaction-based customer satisfaction score

As described above, the Customer Satisfaction Score can be wonderfully determined by means of touchpoint analyses. This means that you can initiate a CSAT survey after every interaction between your customers and your company, for example after a support request or complaint, after a telephone enquiry, after an e-mail enquiry, after an ordering process or even after a visit to a store, for example via a feedback terminal. Through the assignment to the respective contact points, you receive an interaction-based Customer Satisfaction Score.

High feedback rate

Due to the simplicity of determining the Customer Satisfaction Score, you receive a lot of feedback, as your customers do not have to work their way through a long questionnaire. If customers receive a questionnaire by email with only one question, possibly already integrated into the email body, without having to click on a link to a survey, the willingness to answer is quite high.

Simple CSAT benchmark

There are a lot of CSAT benchmark publications circulating on the net, divided into sectors and areas, with which you can compare your own scores. Please make sure that - as already described above - the basis for calculating the CSAT score is consistent.

Determine the customer satisfaction score with QuestionPro

If you are familiar with QuestionPro, you may know that the survey and analysis platform consists of different modules, namely one module each for surveys and market research, for Customer Experience Management and for employee experience management. You can determine the CSAT score with the survey and market research module as well as with the Customer Experience Management variant in just a few steps.

Determine CSAT with the survey and market research platform

QuestionPro offers you very simple options for determining the Customer Satisfaction Score. Simply open the questionnaire editor and select the question type "Single-Choice" from the question library. Then formulate your question and add a certain number of answer options as desired.

Another variant for determining the Customer Satisfaction Score within the survey and market research platform is the use of the Net Promoter Score question types. Here you can define a different number of answer options on a number scale. First select the Net Promoter Score question types, then click on SETTINGS and select the desired answer format.

Then switch the view from the questionnaire editor to the menu item ANALYSE. Here, select the dial next to the question and choose "Customer Satisfaction Score" as the user-defined evaluation model.

Determine CSAT with the Customer Experience Management platform

QuestionPro's Customer Experience Management Platform is the module for creating touchpoint analyses with which you can sustainably track and thus optimise customer touchpoints within the customer journey. The creation of a questionnaire to determine the Customer Satisfaction Score is very similar to the example described above, but here there is a predefined set of questions.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) example

To illustrate the simplicity, we have included an example of a CSAT questionnaire for you QuestionPro created. At the end of the questionnaire you will get to the evaluation. And here you will find the sample questionnaire for the Customer Satisfaction Score

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