We all chase a north star in our lives; owning a house, buying a car, or planning a foreign trip to our dream destination. The goal is personal and varies from person to person. For most businesses, the North Star is achieving a 100% CSAT score or getting as close to it as possible. This is the primary reason that the next time you see a customer service executive refreshing their dashboard or debating on how they should respond to a negative review, chances are high that the CSAT score is involved in the drama.
But, what exactly is CSAT? Why is it so important and often used as a success metric for organizations? Here is the gist. The full form of CSAT is a customer satisfaction score that indicates how happy and content your customers are. It is expressed in the form of a percentage where 0% indicates bad experience and 100% denotes amazing experience. CSAT (customer satisfaction score) is a well-defined metric that gives you a realistic understanding of how much customers love your brand or service. A CSAT above 90% is considered exceptional.
In today’s era, generative AI has found its way into businesses where every industry is focused towards automation up to a point where humans seem to be being replaced slowly yet steadily. Similarly, customer experience has also witnessed a rise in the use of Gen AI. Many seem to believe that a CSAT of 100% is achievable purely with the use of Gen AI. However, is it possible to achieve such a feat? Can AI make each and every customer experience flawless to a point where a CSAT score of 100% will be the new norm? Let’s find out!
A deep dive into 100% CSAT and its challenges
How to Calculate CSAT Score
The formula for calculating the CSAT score is:
CSAT (%) = (Number of satisfied customers/ Total survey responses) × 100
The above calculation gives you the total average percentage of customers who are happy or unhappy with your business. The higher the CSAT score, the more positive is the customer satisfaction towards your business.
Challenges Involved for 100% CSAT Score Achievement
- Volatile customer sentiment
The CSAT rating is extremely susceptible to human emotions. Ever-changing moods, biases, and external circumstances have a significant impact on a person’s decision. Even a perfectly managed ticket support system can still receive a negative or neutral rating if a buyer is frustrated about a situation. - Unrealistic Perception of Perfection
Even if an organization is able to crack the 100% CSAT score target, questions around credibility are often raised. Most companies filter responses or encourage only positive feedback from the customers. Several times the database is too small to make a credible statement. - Uncontrollable External Factors
Pricing changes, supply chain disruptions, competitor actions, and global events tend to influence customer sentiment. Even the smallest dissatisfaction may trigger issues beyond a company’s control.
A quick know-how on Generative AI
Generative AI, also known as Gen AI is the most trending buzzword globally. It refers to artificial intelligence systems that generate content, including audio, text, images, videos, and even codes. It deploys neural networks which are deep learning models to generate human-like responses as per inputs shared by a user.
How does it work?
- AI explores the web and learns vast datasets of image, text, videos, or any other media
- It detects style, structure, and logical sequences in data
- The AI model predicts and generates relevant output
- Based on feedback shared, the AI model enhances accuracy and relevancy
What sparked a conversation about Gen AI and Customer Experience
As we usher into the age of AI, disruptions can be seen across industries. Consumers have also adopted AI faster than any previous technology or platform. From complete automation to cutting down execution time, AI has been truly remarkable when it comes to customer satisfaction.
Similarly, the CX industry has also seen a stark improvement in AI implementation. AI-powered CRM, sentiment analysis, real-time personalization, & AI-powered chatbots are some value-adds that have already seen the light of the day. With AI agents being considered as the next wave in the CX industry, the future looks promising where human expertise and AI-driven efficiency will create unparalleled customer experiences.
Below given are some other key factors that played a role in sparking a conversation about Gen AI and Customer Experience.
Breakthrough in Deep Learning & Large Language Models (LLMs)
Before AI’s adoption in CX, the reliance was majorly on rule-based automation that was limited to predefined responses and scripted chatbots. So, if you asked the bot “I am facing issues with my internet speed” then you would get an appropriate response if at the backend ‘internet speed’ has been defined as the keyword. However, if you rephrase the question without ‘internet speed’ in it, you will get a generic answer that won’t be in sync with the question. Thus, leading to frustrating, unhelpful responses.
With the breakthrough in deep learning and LLMs, AI is now able to perceive contextual understanding of a query – ensuring that the responses are personalised and direct in nature.
You can now experience:
✅ A conversational and contextually-aware bot
✅ A capable AI model that can handle complex customer queries with high accuracy
✅ A personalised touch in every response instead of a traditional, generic reply
Rising Customer Expectations in the Digital Era
The time has long gone when customers were patiently waiting for a response. Today, they seek faster resolution times, hyper-personalized experiences, and omnichannel interactions. With the advent of Gen AI, all complex queries are simplified into instant, well-thought answers. It offers 24/7 AI-powered chat support, AI-driven product recommendations, and sentiment analysis along with predictive engagement.
Poor Cost Optimization & Scalability
Scaling heavily for a CX team can be labour-intensive and costly. Not every brand is able to function with such heavy liquidity. Moreover, some other evident challenges are –
❌ Extremely high operational costs to support large teams
❌ Inconsistent service quality
❌ Unable to scale customer interactions during peak season or time period
This is where Gen AI has transformed the industry completely with its –
✅ Automated tasks
✅ Real-time, AI-driven resolutions
✅ Freeing up human bandwidth to focus on tickets that require extra attention or sensitivity
The psychological barriers to 100% CSAT
Psychological factors heavily influence customer perception. 100% CSAT is extremely difficult to achieve because:
- Customer satisfaction is subjective as the expectation varies from one individual to another.
- Even if you leave a single bad impression or experience in the eyes of your consumers, your brand can lose the trust that took years to build.
- Most brands focus on the overall experience whereas the right defining factor for customer success is how well did your last communication end with your customer. It defines the overall mood of a consumer.
How Generative AI is improving customer satisfaction
With the advent of generative AI, the CX industry is experiencing a revolutionary transformation where faster, more personalized, and proactive communication has now become a reality. Gen AI can easily understand intent, predict needs, and offer human-like engagement to customers in a span of a few seconds. The result? There has been a significant increase in CSAT scores.
- The AI model analyzes the customer’s history and shares personalized responses
- Overall query resolution time has increased significantly with minimum wait time and maximum happy times!
- AI models are now able to understand customer sentiment to detect frustration and respond empathetically
- AI has facilitated interactions across email, chat, and social platforms for a seamless experience
The Reality Check! Can AI alone achieve 100% CSAT?
A simple answer to the question, ‘Does AI in customer service ensure 100% CSAT scores?’ is no. AI can improve the efficiency of your CX strategies but relying completely on it won’t give you 100% CSAT. The issue isn’t in the AI system itself or any other infrastructure, but the fact remains that there are too many variables at play defining a customer’s emotional sentiment. It isn’t a one-dimensional approach where a definitive answer can be defined clearly.
The Limitations of Gen AI
Some key reasons why Gen AI alone can’t give you 100% CSAT scores!
- AI models lack human empathy. They cannot relate to customers’ sensitivity or grasp complex emotions.
- Customers expect a perfect response in the least amount of time. AI can surely be efficient but personalising a response to perfection is still a challenge.
- Many customers are reserved about AI-facing interactions. They simply prefer a human touch above a general response.
- As efficient as AI is considered to be, there are still technical challenges that can occur anytime. Without human intervention, handling such situations can be a nightmare.
AI can surely increase your CSAT scores. It can also improve your brand perception significantly. But, reaching a 100% CSAT mark is simply not possible at this time.
How to take your CSAT scores to the next level with AI + human intervention
Obtaining a 100% CSAT score is THE GOAL for all brands. However, realistically the closer you can get to this number, the better position you are at in terms of consumer perception of your brand. So, the real question is how to get your CSAT scores as close as possible to the 100% mark. The answer is simple. Human and AI tools collaborating together. Let AI automate your entire CX ecosystem and leave the daily monitoring & tackling of complex customer emotions to the customer executives. This is a sure-shot recipe for high CSAT scores.
Here are some ways you can enable a seamless ecosystem for your CX team to thrive with AI.
- Deploy AI for optimising at speed with AI-powered chatbots, predictive analytics, and automation.
- Let AI assist executives with building summaries on suggested responses and customer insights.
- Use the data and insights generated by AI and let humans personalize messages with an empathetic and empowering tone.
- Deploy AI to understand the customer sentiments about your brand and escalate sensitive tasks to human agents.
- Keep training your AI models with the human agents. The more they learn, the less burden it will be on the executives to manage responses.
Future of AI in CSAT optimisation and customer experience
The future of tech integration will be focused on deeper emotional intelligence, hyper personalisation, and seamless AI-driven human collaboration. AI will anticipate the customers needs and respond instantly. Furthermore, sentiment-aware virtual agents will be trained to be more empathetic and contextually aware.
Obtaining 100% CSAT might be difficult at any given time in the future as well but AI will continue to push boundaries of what’s possible and focus on making customer interactions faster, smarter, and more human-like. The future is here and customer interactions will be transformed – one innovation at a time.
