CSAT: definition, calculation and tips to improve customer satisfaction
In a world where customer relations play a major role, you must constantly work to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. It is essential to optimize every aspect of your service production and distribution.
Among the tools available, CSAT stands out as a key indicator for evaluating your customers' satisfaction after their interaction with your company. By relying on CSAT, you can gather valuable feedback that will help you adjust your strategies and better meet your customers' needs.
This article explores what CSAT is, the method for measuring the score, and the importance of this indicator in maintaining a positive customer relationship.
Definition of CSAT
The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a crucial indicator for measuring your customers' satisfaction after an interaction with your company. This score is obtained through post-interaction surveys that capture customer sentiment while their experience is still fresh.
The ultimate goal is to transform the data collected from CSAT into concrete actions that not only improve the customer experience but also increase loyalty and encourage customers to return. When used correctly, this score becomes an essential strategic tool for aligning your strategies with the actual expectations and needs of your customers.
What are the advantages of CSAT?
The CSAT score is simple to visualize, easy to interpret, and perfect for on-the-spot use after a customer interaction. It helps you gather customer feedback effectively and adjust your strategies based on the results.
1. Accurate results
CSAT provides accurate and reliable results thanks to its simple and standardized calculation method. This helps to clearly identify sources of frustration and understand customer expectations. This information is crucial for better meeting their needs and optimizing their customer experience.
2. Simplicity
CSAT questions are often clear, concise, and easy for everyone to understand. This format encourages more customers to respond, resulting in a large volume of positive and reliable responses. When customers find it easy to give their opinion, this strengthens the quality of the data collected and ensures an accurate assessment of their level of satisfaction.
3. Reliability
Due to the simplicity of the question and the response methods, a large number of responses are obtained. Consequently, the results obtained are highly representative and therefore reliable for measuring customer satisfaction.
4. Universal application
The clarity of CSAT questions allows them to be asked to all customers without having to segment the customer base. This provides a global view of customer sentiment and allows each point of the customer journey to be addressed uniformly.
5. Versatility
CSAT is a versatile indicator. It can evaluate different aspects of a product or service, making it easier to understand the various points of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This allows you to adjust your offerings to improve customer loyalty.
6. Real-time results
Thanks to this immediate feedback, you can quickly identify dissatisfied customers and intervene without delay. This helps maintain a high level of customer retention and reduce churn. Obtaining rapid results is essential to take corrective action before problems escalate.
How to measure your CSAT score
To measure your customers' CSAT score, a satisfaction survey must be conducted immediately after a key interaction.
The most common way to achieve this is to ask a direct question such as:
“Are you satisfied with our products / services / responses provided?”
The user should be put in a position to provide a clear and concise answer in a simple, intuitive, and efficient manner. Therefore, offer two types of responses:
- Yes / No
- Graded scale: very satisfied, satisfied, neutral, slightly satisfied, not at all satisfied.
The graded scale is often preferred because it provides more detailed data. You can also use ratings from 1 to 5, stars, or smileys.
How to create an effective CSAT questionnaire?
A well-structured CSAT questionnaire is essential for accurately measuring customer satisfaction. Here's how you can achieve this:
- Formulate clear questions: Ensure that each question is simple and direct. Avoid jargon to ensure that all respondents understand it well.
- Use a simple scale: A scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 is commonly used to measure satisfaction. This allows customers to easily evaluate their experience.
- Add a comments field: Providing a space for free-form responses allows customers to explain their rating. This feedback can provide valuable insights.
- Collect feedback immediately: It is important to collect feedback shortly after the customer interaction or purchase to obtain accurate and authentic responses.
By carrying out these steps, you will maximize the effectiveness of your CSAT questionnaire, while improving the customer experience.
CSAT: calculation methods
To calculate the CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), you must first choose a suitable measurement method based on the type of response you have chosen to submit to the customer.
One of the most common approaches uses a rating scale of 1 to 5. On this scale, a response is considered:
- Positive if it is rated 4 or 5.
- Negative if it is between 1 and 3.
The formula for calculating CSAT is simple:
CSAT = (Number of positive responses / Total number of responses) x 100
By monitoring these scores, you can leverage customer satisfaction data to identify areas for improvement.
Keep in mind that response rates may vary, which can influence the accuracy of the CSAT. Therefore, it is important to gather enough responses to obtain a reliable result.
What constitutes a good CSAT?
A very good CSAT score is generally above 80%. This indicates that the majority of your customers have a positive opinion of your brand.
Conversely, if the score is below 50%, the result is negative, indicating that most customers are dissatisfied.
Note that expectations may vary for a given sector. Hence, the importance of comparing your score with the standards of your industry.
What are the limitations of CSAT?
The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) has several limitations that are crucial to understand in order to correctly interpret the results obtained. Here are the main limitations:
Partial results
CSAT measures customer satisfaction at a specific point in time. This means that you are not evaluating the customer's overall experience with your brand over time. In other words, it does not capture the evolution of satisfaction or long-term engagement with your product or service.
Biased responses
The results can often be influenced by the customers' state of mind when responding to the questionnaire. Their mood or a particularly recent experience may affect their responses, making the CSAT not fully representative of their actual satisfaction.
Low response rate
CSAT surveys can sometimes have a low response rate. Moreover, those who have had a bad experience often tend to want to answer the questionnaire to express their dissatisfaction. This trend can skew the score by accentuating negative opinions, whereas the objective is to represent your entire customer base.
Incomplete measurement
The CSAT evaluates a specific interaction but does not take into account all aspects of the customer relationship, such as loyalty or recommendation. To have a complete view, you must therefore combine the CSAT with other indicators. We address this topic in the next section.
Other customer satisfaction measurement indicators
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
The NPS or Net Promoter Score is a valuable tool for understanding if your customers are willing to recommend you.
The central question asked is often:
"On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?"
The results are divided into three categories:
- Detractors: These are those who give a score of 0 to 6. They are not satisfied and could potentially harm your reputation.
- Passives: With a score of 7 to 8, they are satisfied, but not enough to actively recommend your brand.
- Promoters: Those who respond between 9 and 10. They are highly satisfied and willing to recommend your services.
In other words, satisfaction here goes hand in hand with loyalty: a loyal customer is more likely to recommend the brand to others, whereas a simply satisfied customer will not necessarily do so.
Thus, by combining CSAT with NPS, you can better understand the strength of your customer relationships.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
The CES, or customer effort score, measures how easily a customer can perform an action with the brand, such as making a purchase.
A typical question might be:
“How much effort did you put forth to make your purchase/other action?”
This survey helps identify obstacles within your services, such as website navigation, the payment process, or other issues.
Unlike CSAT, which evaluates satisfaction, CES identifies pain points that could discourage your customers and drive them to your competitors.
The basis of the CES concept is the following reasoning: customer satisfaction depends in part on the level of effort the customer must expend to implement their action.
Using these two complementary tools, CSAT and CES, provides a more complete view of the customer experience.
What actions should you take after measuring CSAT?
1. Results analysis
Once you have measured your CSAT score, it is important to understand why customers gave the ratings they did.
Asking an additional question like "Why?" allows you to gather open feedback from customers. These responses, called "verbatim," provide valuable information about the reasons for satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
To analyze this verbatim feedback, it is helpful to use semantic analysis tools, such as Batvoice AI. These tools categorize recurring themes and convert this information into percentages to better understand trends. This helps you to quickly identify problems or identify what works well in your services in a continuous improvement approach.
2. Automated actions
By using CSAT scores, you can implement automated actions tailored to customer satisfaction levels.
For those who have given a low rating, for example 1 or 2 out of 5, sending an automatic notification to your customer support team can be set up. This will initiate a personal follow-up to resolve the issue and preserve your brand image.
Similarly, for those who give high ratings like 4 or 5, you can automate sending thank you messages. Offering benefits, such as loyalty points, or encouraging them to share their positive experience, strengthens your relationship with customers and improves their satisfaction.
These actions strengthen their confidence in your brand by showing that you are attentive to your customers' feelings.
3. CSAT as a marketing argument
The CSAT score can be a powerful asset in your marketing strategies. Use it to showcase customer satisfaction during advertising campaigns, interviews, or public presentations. Mentioning a high CSAT score reinforces the confidence and appeal of your products or services.
You can also use positive verbatim feedback in your marketing campaigns. By quoting positive feedback on your website or in your advertisements, you use this real feedback as a testament to the quality of your customer service. This becomes a strong argument for attracting new customers and maximizing your revenue.
How to improve your CSAT score?
To improve your CSAT score, you need to take a methodical approach. Here are some strategies to improve it effectively:
- Gather feedback: Encourage your customers to provide their feedback regularly. Use post-purchase surveys by email, phone, or in person to understand their level of satisfaction and identify areas for improvement.
- Analyze the results: Carefully examine the survey results to identify trends. Pay particular attention to negative or recurring aspects that require your attention.
- Train personnel: Ensure your team is well-trained to address customer needs and concerns. The ability to resolve issues quickly and effectively can significantly improve your CSAT score.
- Continuous product improvement: Solicit feedback on products to understand weaknesses and make improvements based on customer feedback. A product that better meets consumer expectations generally leads to a higher satisfaction rate.
- Transparent communication: Always be transparent with your customers. Inform them of any changes or obstacles encountered and how you plan to resolve them.
How can Batvoice help you?
The Artificial Intelligence of Batvoice analyzes the exchanges between agents and customers to extract key information on customer satisfaction.
Our solution integrates the CSAT score obtained through third-party solutions immediately after each interaction with customer service. Thanks to the analysis of CSAT and customer verbatim during calls, Batvoice is able to align the questionnaire responses with the sentiment of the call.
In the event of a negative score or strong anger detected during the call, Batvoice offers agents immediate corrective actions to resolve customer dissatisfaction.
By analyzing the customer's voice, our technology allows us to identify recurring words in their vocabulary and identify the strengths of the call. This is to classify calls by topic and more easily identify recurring issues related to each topic.
