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What is a CSAT survey?

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When your business depends on your customers for growth and profit, you cannot put aside the satisfaction and experience of your customers. You need to understand what customers think about your organization. How do they feel about the products, services as well as quality of customer service you offer?

And, the easiest and fastest way to learn about these is to ask the customers directly. For this purpose, the CSAT survey is your one important friend. With the CSAT survey you can ask the consumers to rate their experience with your organization. You can also ask them to share their opinions or feedback which they feel like you should know.

User Experience

CSAT Survey

The CSAT survey gives customers an opportunity to voice their opinion about their experience. And, gives a company the chance to work on the customer feedback and regain the trust of their customers. The CSAT survey is short for Customer Satisfaction Survey. CSAT survey uses a simple satisfaction question to the customers the answer of which determines the CSAT score. The question asked is based on a specific experience. 

How satisfied are you with the “Company’s” collection of (product category), on a scale of 1 to 5?

  • 1: Extremely unsatisfied
  • 5: Extremely satisfied

After the responses are collected from the audience you can separate the negative responses (1 and 2) from the positive responses (4 and 5). Measure your CSAT score by using the following formula

CSAT score = no. of positive responses/ total no. of collected responses X 100

This will give you the percentage of customers who are satisfied with your product category. Similarly, you can ask the question about different topics such as interaction with a service rep, services offered, brand, packaging, product quality, knowledge base, etc.

Use CSAT surveys to gather feedback on:

  • Interaction with Customer support
  • Interaction with Sales Rep
  • Customer Onboarding
  • Event feedback (conference, Webinar)
  • Product satisfaction
  • Online checkout
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CSAT survey structure

The CSAT survey is designed to be short in length. The survey includes two types of questions.

First Question:

 Satisfaction question that contributes to CSAT score. 

This includes the above-mentioned question. The question is asked about the customer experience touchpoint you want to learn about.

What is CSAT survey

You can include a rating scale such as 3, 5, 7, or 10 point rating scale. You can also use a Star Rating or an emoji rating instead of numbers. These rating scales help gather quantifiable responses that provide you your company’s CSAT score. 

Second Question:

 Open Text Question or Open-ended Feedback

What is CSAT survey1

The second question can be a follow-up on the first one asking the customer to explain their reason behind the score. Or, it could be an open-ended question to collect insight into other factors relevant to the customer experience touchpoint. The open text question does not contribute to the CSAT score but helps the company to learn about customer experience from customers themselves. 

Additional Questions: 

You can add more ratings or open-ended questions to gather more information on the survey topic. However, keep the number of questions to 10 in total. A too-long survey can bore the respondent. Add questions that are relevant, don’t add hypothetical or leading questions which may confuse the respondents.

User Experience

CSAT Survey distribution method

CSAT surveys are the most common approach that companies adopt to collect relevant information. It is for this reason that you can create your CSAT survey without adding any follow-up questions. You can simply send your customer the satisfaction “rating scale” question with or without any additional questions.

In-app CSAT survey

You can add a satisfaction feedback bar to your app or website. In-app surveys have high response rates because you can pop up the question while customers are still interacting with your company.

Post-service survey

You can send a CSAT survey after the completion of a particular service. For example, you can ask for customer feedback directly after their product is delivered to them. The experience is fresh at the time and so, the customer will provide accurate information. You can send the survey via email, or SMS.

Email survey

You can use email service when you want to collect deep insight from the customers. Email surveys offer customers the freedom to respond when they have time. Thus you can include multiple questions in the survey. 

CSAT surveys measure the level of satisfaction after a particular interaction. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are not sending too many surveys to the same customers. Also, make sure that the team responds to the customers so that they know the company has heard their opinion.

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Advantages of CSAT survey

Useful Feedback

 Asking your customer directly about their experience can provide you relevant information. You will learn how differently each customer views your company.

Customer Retention

It is a platform for customers to share their opinion about the company. You can use the feedback to bridge the gap between the experience expected by customers and the actual experience they receive. This way you can build trust and improve retention.

Identify Market Trends

Surveying your customers will help you keep updated on what they are expecting from the market. You can learn about their preferences and identify the patterns. You can use the trends that will work for your company and give customers what they expect.

Differ from Competitors

Customer experience and satisfaction are used as the key differentiators in the industries. Use the CSAT survey to track the progress you have made. Compare your CSAT score to your competitors to determine what you have achieved to date.

User Experience

Limitation of CSAT surveys

CSAT survey cannot predict loyalty

A customer may claim that they are satisfied with your brand, its products, and its services. However, it does not mean that they will stick with your company.

The CSAT survey measures the short-term loyalty of customers

It is used by companies to collect immediate feedback after the completion of a service.

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Best practices for CSAT survey

Don’t use many questions

Use limited no. of questions in the survey. Ask only relevant questions. Customers don’t have the patience or time to go through 30 questions to inform you about their preferences. Limit the no. of questions to 8 or 10.

Use smaller Rating scales

 It is better to use rating scales like a 3-point or a 5-point. Limited options may help the audience be more determined about their answer. With a 10-point scale, the respondent may get confused about so many options. Also, it may become ambiguous what the 6 rating even means.

Don’t ask demographic questions without the N/A option available

Respondents may not be willing to share personal information such as gender or age. Make the question option by providing a skip button or a N/A option as a choice.

User Experience

Don’t send too many reminders

 If you are using an SMS or email service to send your customers a survey, don’t remind them too many times. Maybe send them a reminder in the middle or towards the end of the survey period. Your customers are not obligated to respond to your survey.

Respond immediately to negative responses

Don’t set aside the negative response to analyze them in detail and then respond. The customer will feel that you don’t care about their opinion. Reply to them promptly and follow up to gain more information to understand their feedback.

Include limited Open-text feedback

Leave space for open-text questions. Don’t ask for reasons after every rating question. However, ask open-ended questions to give customers the opportunity to share and express their thoughts to the company. 

Using a simple survey method like CSAT to regularly gauge customer experience and satisfaction level helps the company stay in track with customer expectations. Knowing what customers are expecting from the market and the changes in trends can be useful for the company to succeed.

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FAQs

CSAT is used to refer to Customer Satisfaction. It is a metric that tracks the level of satisfaction customers experience when they interact with a company, its product, or its services.

A good response rate for a CSAT survey ranges between 25% and 50%.

The CSAT survey includes one specific rating question that measures customer happiness about a particular customer touchpoint. The question is designed like: “How satisfied are you with the event organized by the company?” The rating scale could be a 3, 5, 7, or 10 point scale.

User Experience

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