What is Customer Satisfaction Score and How To Measure It?
Customer satisfaction is the thing that makes any business thrive today in this competitive world. But how does one measure and improve customer satisfaction?
The most widely used metric for doing this is the Customer Satisfaction Score, or CSAT. Understanding what CSAT is, how it is calculated, and why it is important will give you an invaluable insight into customers’ experiences and actionable steps toward overall satisfaction improvement.
Now, let us enter the world of CSAT and see the scope that CSAT may bring to your business.
What Is The Customer Satisfaction Score?
A customer satisfaction score or CSAT is a measure used in customer service that measures the happiness and satisfaction of customers of a company’s product or service experience.
More than just a customer service metric, a customer satisfaction score can be described as a tool that makes it possible for businesses to:
- Measure the quality of customer experience delivered to their customers
- Collect user feedback on your brand, product, or service
- Predict the likelihood of customers churning
- Collect data on customer expectations and develop features to meet such expectations.
CSAT is measured individually, meaning the feedback is collected from individual customers at different stages of the customer survey.
Companies use CSAT surveys to ask customers simple feedback questions such as “How satisfied are you with your experience?” or “How would you rate our product/service?”
CSAT is measured through the extent to which satisfaction is determined by a scale having either of the response options in the form of a binary response (yes/no), an emoticon scale (😁 or 😞), or on a 5-point or 7-point Like scale (e.g. 1- Strongly disagree to 5- Strongly agree).
You can place these surveys strategically through emails, in-app, or online feedback to collect customer feedback.
How to Calculate Customer Satisfaction Score?
Calculating your CSAT score is quite easy. With a CSAT survey, you can ask customers to grade your products or services using a scaled-based response system.
When the results are in, you simply take the overall number of satisfied responses-records with ratings from 8 to 10 and divide them by the total number of customers surveyed. Then multiply that by 100.
Of course, a 100% CSAT would be just wonderful, but that has to be weighed against other metrics. Total CSAT responses received should be compared to the total number of your customers. You will now know if the score you get in CSAT indeed reflects the overall satisfaction of your customers.
For example, if 100 out of 250 responses are positive but the total customer base is 1,000 then, the CSAT score depicts that you do not possess the true satisfaction level of your customers.
How to Measure CSAT Using Locobuzz?
One can measure customer satisfaction scores through Locobuzz with the provision for using all-rounded feedback forms and the capabilities of a robust survey provided by the company.
This integration would thus make it feasible to collect and analyze feedback from customers effectively, thereby making actionable insights nto the experience of the customer.
Steps to Measure CSAT Using Locobuzz:
Step 1: Setup Your CSAT Survey
CSAT Survey with a user interface of Locobuzz Example question, “How satisfied are you with our service today?” Highly customized feedback forms, even some rating scales-for example, 1-5 or 1-10-for business needs.
Personalized Feedback Forms: The Locobuzz tool enables the use of the feature of the feedback forms available. Such forms can be personalized to include customer preferences and interaction history. Personalization makes the collected feedback more relevant.
2. Deliver Your Survey
Multi-Channel Distribution: This multi-channel distribution mechanism will help the sender to reach out to the customers effectively with maximum rates of response while sending a survey through mailers, SMS, social media, and app in-app prompts by using locobuzz’s feature.
Timing is Everything: You survey your customers right after having a contact or the transaction with them-that they’re still fresh on what they just went through. And just so you know the loco buzz real time feedback makes this experience.
3. Collect And Analyze Responses
Collect Responses as They Flow In: Locobuzz collects data in real time as responses flow in, thus allowing you to track real-time customer satisfaction trends.
Locobuzz analyzes real-time data to calculate the CSAT Score.
4. Draw Insights And Implement
Advanced Analytics: Use analytics used by Locobuzz in order to understand the data aptly. The tool provides a great insight into the satisfaction of customers and the gaps that need improvement from the collected feed.
Follow-Up Mechanism: Once the output has been made in the form of feedback, communicate with the customers through the mechanism of follow-up communications. This is where their thoughts are understood to mean much, and where issues raised due to the survey may be clarified.
5. Continuity Improvement
Collect CSAT as a Habit: You should measure CSAT as part of the habit of your customer engagement strategy. The more frequently you update your surveys, the better you track improvement and changes in customer sentiment over time.
It will integrate with the measurement processes of CSAT to provide the businesses with the efficiency of extracting actionable insights through the feature of the feedback form.
This holistically boosts understanding with respect to customer satisfaction and leads toward developing improved service offerings that may propel customer loyalty and retention.
Importance Of CSAT
1. Measure Customer Sentiment.
CSAT actually gives an exact sense of how much the company manages to fulfil the expectations of a particular customer.
Feedback being accumulated at various touch points will give the organisation an idea of the way the minds of customers are traveling in that specific period and will make it possible to locate trends and where changes have to be made.
2. Data-Driven Decision Making.
The knowledge gained from CSAT can empower a company to make informed decisions that are grounded on the data.
Such decisions can considerably impact the sale and profitability of the whole business. In addition, the experience and service of an organisation can be designed and scaled with customer opinions to lead to significant business outcomes.
3. Developing Customer Loyalty and Retention.
Higher CSAT scores typically mean higher rates of loyalty. Happy customers are more likely to become repeat buyers, even brand fans in a competitive market.
80% of customers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalised experiences and increases the prospect of them making more purchases in the future.
4. Improvement Areas.
CSAT surveys give the business actionable insights into specific areas where the business needs to focus urgently.
An analysis of feedback allows business entities to understand gaps between what customers expect and what they experience thus enabling the business to take drastic measures.
5. Enhancing Customer Experience.
Measuring CSAT regularly helps companies understand the customer journey so much better, and in those pain spots.
That continuous loop of feedback gives the companies a chance to enhance the total experience of the customers by addressing issues before it pushes them out.
6. Benchmarking Performance.
The CSAT scores offer a common basis to benchmark performance from one team to another across an organisation’s departments.
This is an important aspect of benchmarking as it sets common goals for customer satisfaction and, at the same time, increases efforts toward improvement by the business.
7. Building Trust and Transparency.
Keeping customers abreast of the CSAT scores ensures building trust in the brand. In this respect, overall relationships that companies may hold with their customers can be improved, as well as loyalty from customers toward such an organization.
In a nutshell, CSAT is not only a measure but an essential tool for businesses to thrive under a customer-centric landscape. Organisations can improve the offerings and eventually the experiences for customers through effective usage of CSAT. This further propels growth and success.
Alternatives of CSAT
Businesses use various measures of customer satisfaction; it depends on which aim the business wishes to achieve. Let’s discuss two alternatives to CSAT.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NPS: Net promoter score is the measure of customer satisfaction in terms of the possibility of users recommending your products to others on a scale of 0-10. It is measured for getting an estimation about the mood of customers and their loyalty through just one question: “How likely are you to recommend {product name} to a friend or colleague?
Scores on the NPS should be a good predictor of business growth; a high score indicates healthy relationship between your business and customers, while lower scores say otherwise. Tracking customer loyalty over time due to features such as the feature upgrades in the customer journey using the NPS surveys.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
The measurement for the Customer Effort Score Metric, or CES, is determining the ease that a customer experiences in terms of interaction with a company. It measures how much effort customers go through in interacting with a product in order to achieve an outcome of interest, such as a purchase, resolving an issue, or getting help.
In most cases, the CES survey would say something to this extent, “On a scale of 1-5, how easy was it to {experience}?” The score is usually measured on a 5-point or 7-point scale ranging from “very difficult to very easy.” With the measurement of CES scores, companies can pinpoint areas where customers are experiencing difficulty and where there’s a need for improvement to make the experience seamless for their customers.
Product-Market Fit (PMF)
Emoji survey is a simple and popular way of measuring customer satisfaction.
Product-market fit (PMF) is another simple yet effective way to understand customer satisfaction. For clarity, product-market fit measures how well your product or service satisfies market demand.
It marries a simple question to a 1-3 Likert scale of very/somewhat/not disappointed. For instance, you can ask your customer:
How will you feel if you cannot use the product?
Very dissatisfied
Somewhat dissatisfied
Not dissatisfied
The basic concept is that you want at least 40% or more to answer “Very dissatisfied.” And thus, it would reflect that your product is in a must-have column of a small set of users. Entrepreneur Sean Ellis found that a PMF score greater than 40% was quite critical to achieving success for early start-ups.
How to measure PMF ?
You can easily get your PMF score by summing up the total number of people who said they would be very dissatisfied if the product were no longer available. As Sean Ellis says, when that score turns out to be above 40%, you know you have a good product-market fit.
5 Advantages of employing CSAT
Now that we have defined the same, let’s understand why you should begin using CSAT.
1. CSAT Is User-Friendly.
CSAT surveys are made in such a way as to facilitate understanding.
They are user-friendly, easy to understand, and can be customized rather easily without much trouble.
The CSAT usually comes along with one question that’s easy to understand and feels interactive to the respondent.
2. Increases Response Rate.
Because CSAT surveys are short and to the point, they usually have a high response rate. They do not need much time and effort from the customer, and provided they come in context, customers will not bother to express their opinions.
3. CSAT Enables To Inquire a Range of Question Types.
CSAT enables you to ask questions in many ways, and about various experiences that make it versatile with each type of customer interaction.
This versatility can be an advantage in collecting insights from a variety of customer experiences and tailoring questions to suit a specific context and purpose.
For instance, you could tailor one CSAT survey towards measuring your customer service or interaction with features.
4. For Cleaning Out Friction Points.
CSAT is well-suited for measuring individual experiences. For example, onboarding experience, or particular aspects of products or services.
Every aspect of your product matters, and through CSAT, you’ll be able to measure how satisfied the customers are with that specific aspect of your product offering versus your overall experience.
Deal with low-scoring areas as well as friction points for improving the customer experience and satisfaction.
5. Higher Customer Satisfaction.
More customers would be retained and churned lower, meaning a higher score in customer satisfaction. People come for the product but stay for the experience.
A higher satisfaction score implies people are satisfied enough to remain loyal to your company.
8 Pointers To Boost Your CSAT
The ultimate goal of every company is to score a high CSAT score; however, as lovely as that sounds, that happens overnight. You have to be consistent and practice the following best practices to ensure customers have the best experience at all times.
1. Frame Your Questions Carefully
The success of a customer satisfaction survey depends on the questions you ask. Good questions should be easy to understand, to be answered in a short time and to remain relevant to their purpose.
A good question yields an accurate response, but poorly crafted ones can have adverse effects. They introduce survey bias, lowering the response rates and compromising the quality of data.
Bad questions are not easily spotted because they come masked. What you should be on your watch out for is:
- Loaded language that encourages positive answers
- Complicated wordings of questions
- Vague, unclear and ambiguous questions
- Presenting too many questions at once
- Usage of double negative in your questions
- Frame your questions wisely and guide users on how to answer questions without expecting anything from them.
2. Provide Valuable Feedback
The right timing with a specific touchpoint in the customer’s journey might see your CSAT survey sent out.
This could be after a customer has reached a milestone after making an action that you are tracking regarding the feedback or after they have successfully completed the same.
Indeed, doing things in real time captures fresh and unfiltered opinions from your customers, and therefore, better data.
3. Set Business Goals
Since customer satisfaction (CSAT) is far less apparent to stakeholders than the acquisition of a customer, it gets forgotten too often during goal-setting.
Setting CSAT goals is the first step to achieving success. It gives you clarity and alignment for the actions that your team takes toward your business goals.
A couple of goals you might want to set include:
- Increase your CSAT score by a certain percentage at the end of the quarter.
- Reduce churn and increase customer retention by a certain percentage at the end of the year.
4. Develop An Omnichannel Customer Support.
Having an uninterrupted customer support system through multi-channel modes of communication can greatly enhance customer satisfaction. Customer grievance is to be addressed immediately by your support staff regardless of the mode of communication for support from your customers.
Want to build an Omnichannel support experience? This is what it holds within:
- Integrate different channels of support such as email, telephonic calls, and even social media chats to access your data on the customers in all channels.
- Use customer data to personalize interactions and create an omnichannel experience with the customers.
- Improve your resolution time for issues with the right tools installed in your customer support agents.
- Close the feedback loop with online requests for the same and informing the customers of any changes.
- Invest in an advanced tool like Locobuzz so that you can have a centralised view of your customer data.
5. Collect Feedback To Optimise Your Products Or Services
Knowing your CSAT score and collecting customer feedback will do no good if you don’t act on it. Feedback shows you what you are doing right, product weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
This means you can then adjust your product expectations and fine-tune your customer experience strategy going forward.
After gathering the feedback, analyze it to find insight. What to look for is the patterns, trends, opportunities, and gaps that the team might have overlooked. Use advanced analytics tools of Locobuzz to find such insights.
Feedback that involves doing something urgent, such as a bug fix, first so you act on it. Then, consider other types of feedback in terms of whether they are in-line with your short term business needs, resources and priorities.
All of these things should go into a product roadmap for further research or validation into future development.
6. Better Response Time.
Slow response times may lead companies to losing out on customer trust and loyalty. Customers are highly impatient, so a slow response time also brings along the consequence of having a poor satisfaction score.
To hasten up the response time, give the customers self-service options such as a resource center with FAQs, videos, and chatbots. Brands use Locobuzz to automate their conversational workflow on social media.
7. Carefully Address Customer Complaints.
Unwanted critical feedback is never easy to hear. It can make us defensive, even angry. And as a brand, this becomes inevitable; and no matter how hard you try to please your customers, there will definitely be someone who will have something not so good to say about your business.
These reviews can come from comments on social media, review sites, or even your CSAT surveys.
Do not become defensive when you get a bad review; that is not against you or your brand; it is just negative feedback.
Listen carefully to a customer’s complaint, understand what happened and why it happened, and then contact the customer and take responsibility. This can be via email or through handling your feedback through Locobuzz.
Locobuzz aggregates all comments and messages across various social media platforms onto a single dashboard so you can monitor, see and respond to your customers. In addition to this you can track your notifications and brand mentions in order to catch your negative feedback.
8. Review Your CSAT Regularly.
Measuring your CSAT isn’t a one-time thing; it’s continuous. You would measure and set financial goals for your brand, so set targets for improving your CSAT on a bi-monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Create a roadmap for long-run and set measures to:
Review your CSAT and come up with better means for distribution in-app, email, knowledge base articles, etc.
Compare past and present CSAT scores and obtain an overview of current changes.
Hold one-on-one interviews with power users and churned users to find out your strengths and weaknesses.
Write down previous actions and effectiveness in the CSAT score, like adding more support channels, did it improve our CSAT score?
Develop a customer service report to document your process and results.
To Sum It Up
Although the ultimate aim is to outdo customer satisfaction, sending out surveys, analysing results and finding patterns in your customer satisfaction score is very stressful, especially with a growing customer base.
You need the right tool to automate this so you can focus on achieving other important tasks at your business.
Locobuzz gives you advanced solutions in terms of customer experience solutions, aiming for you to exceed customer expectations and deliver better experiences.