Customer satisfaction is one of the most important factors for the success of any business. Companies that meet their customers' expectations are more likely to retain their loyalty and recommend their products or services to others.
And one of the most effective ways to measure customer satisfaction is through the CSAT , or Customer Satisfaction Score. CSAT is a metric that measures customer satisfaction with a specific interaction.
Widely used by customer service teams, there are three major metrics for measuring customer experience : CSAT, NPS , and CES .
All three aim to elicit customer feedback in carefully designed surveys that measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and effort.
Since we already have materials talking about NPS and CES , it's time to explain CSAT , and how this metric can be applied to your business.
Let's go?
What is CSAT and what does its acronym mean?
CSAT a simple question that asks customers how they rate their experience with a given interaction. Customer response is typically measured on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing “very dissatisfied” and 5 representing “very satisfied.”
Since CSAT has a transactional characteristic, this means it should be sent to measure how satisfied your customers are with an action taken by your company or with certain aspects of your products or services.
It can be used at different times during the consumer's purchasing journey , such as after a purchase made on the website.
It can also be used to measure the level of satisfaction with a more specific aspect that you wish to analyze, such as delivery time, shipping cost, payment methods, service provided, quality of service, among countless other possibilities.
Additionally, CSAT is a great way to understand sentiment towards a given experience.
With this data, you'll have the power to ensure your customers are satisfied with the way you solve their problems , or drive improvements in areas where they're lacking.
💡 Understand the difference between key customer experience metrics
CSAT Question: Understand the difference between its questions and applications
Not all CSAT surveys are created equal. Depending on how the survey question is phrased, teams can get very different feedback from their customers.
If you want customers to focus more on the service aspect, specify that in the question. If you're more interested in the overall perception of the experience, the question can be more open-ended.
Experiment with different types of questions to identify which ones get the clearest, most actionable feedback for your customer service team. Here are some examples to consider.

Once your customer answers your main CSAT question about their level of satisfaction with a particular interaction, it's time to ask for more qualitative feedback to further enrich your survey.
The follow-up question gives your customer the opportunity to better express their experience with your solution; that's why many customer success consider the follow-up question a key part of the survey.

CSAT Calculation: Understand how to calculate this metric
As you might imagine, there are several ways to calculate CSAT because there are different ways to measure this score. The lack of a specific definition means companies can tailor their measurements to their own business needs.
Therefore, customer satisfaction scores can be measured in five ways, namely:
- Yes and No – 1 and 2 (binary)
- Dissatisfied/Neutral/Satisfied – 1 and 3
- 1 to 5 (Likert scale)
- 1 to 7 (Likert Scale)
- 0 to 10 (Likert scale)
How you measure depends on your strategy and what best suits your needs. There's no one best or worst measurement, as long as you ask the right question.
Because CSAT is a transactional metric, the only thing you need to know is whether your customer is satisfied or not.
If you choose to calculate CSAT on numeric scales like 1 to 5, 1 to 7, or 1 to 10, you'll need to calculate the weighted average by adding up all occurrences and dividing by the number of respondents. See the image below for an example of 1 to 10:

Ps: This weighted average model can be applied to all models that are on the Likert scale.
But if you opt for the 1 and 2, or 1 to 3 model, the calculation ends up being easier, since you'll basically have to subtract the percentage of satisfied vs. dissatisfied . Check out the following image:

If you want to check out the other measurement modes, click here .
When should you use CSAT in your business?
Since CSAT is a transactional metric, it is used after specific interactions to measure customer satisfaction in the short term.
Therefore, the CSAT question can help you collect meaningful data at any stage of the customer journey , and is especially useful after the following customer touchpoints:
- Customer service interactions (phone, live chat, email, social media);
- Registration for programs or services;
- Website visits;
- Training and onboarding;
- Online checkouts;
- Client meetings or consultations;
- Conference and event feedback;
A great strength of this metric is its simplicity. Therefore, when you identify customer satisfaction levels , it becomes easier to close the loop on a customer interaction.
And if for some reason the experience was not satisfactory, it is easy to identify that moment and take steps to remedy that interaction.
Not only that, but you can track satisfaction across the entire customer lifecycle very simply using the customer satisfaction score .
Because it's such a quick survey, you can run multiple experiments throughout a customer's journey and get a bird's eye view of how the customer feels at various touchpoints along the way.
This makes it easier to find potential bottlenecks and improve the customer experience .
Why use CSAT? Understand the reasons to implement this metric in your business
It's very important to know what your customers think about your company, what the positive factors are, and what needs to be improved.
Below are some points that explain the use of CSAT:
#1 Simple and fast
A single question is enough to determine your customer satisfaction score, with the option of linking it to a follow-up question.
A single question is enough to determine your customer satisfaction score, with the option of linking it to a follow-up question.
#2 Quantifiable
Management will have tangible data and see how well their company is performing with a simple metric. The method is easy for everyone to understand.
#3 Versatile
It allows you to understand customer satisfaction in general and also in specific interactions, in addition to being easily understood by users and usually having good response rates.
#4 Comparison
Because it's a simple metric, it's easy to benchmark across departments and branches of the company. For example, establish that the average CSAT for customer support should be equal to or greater than 80%.
#5 Is CSAT complementary to other metrics?!
In addition to being a very powerful transactional metric, CSAT can be associated with other metrics such as NPS and CES , giving you an overview of your customer's experience with different aspects of your service.
When comparing the different customer experience metrics , we can conclude that each of them has its own applicability, which is why they complement each other and provide more insights when applied together.
For example, we could imagine a survey to measure satisfaction among attendees of a recent event you organized.
When creating a survey, you can ask the respondent to fill out some questions regarding their satisfaction (CSAT), divided into different areas of the event (satisfaction with the content, food, quality of speakers, location, etc.).
Additionally, you could ask the CES to gauge the effort your customers put into registering for this event. At the end of the survey, you could ask how likely your customers are to recommend the event to friends and colleagues (NPS).
This is a complete way to measure and analyze customer satisfaction.
Step by step guide on how to implement CSAT:
Conducting a CSAT survey is very similar to a CES , as both operate transactionally. All you need to know about CSAT is that it's a metric used to measure customer satisfaction and works best for specific interactions.
With that in mind, let's get to the point:
#1 Point of Contact
The first step is to define which touchpoints you want to measure. This question can help you gather more meaningful insights at any stage of the customer journey, such as:
- Customer service interactions (phone, live chat, email, social media);
- Registration for programs or services;
- Website visits;
- Training and onboarding;
- Online checkouts;
- Client meetings or consultations;
- Conference and event feedback;
#2 Choosing channels
Depending on the platform you use, the question will be sent in a different format. If you use more than one customer contact channel at this point in the purchasing journey, test it! Testing is the only way to identify the channel with the highest response rate.
In other words, try requesting an answer to your question via email , SMS , website , app, chat , or whatever else is possible.
#3 Submit your survey
CSAT is typically measured transactionally. This means that the time to ask customers for feedback is after each cycle ends . With this in mind, you should set up your automation and send the survey after a specific event of your choosing, based on the touchpoints you selected in step 1.
#4 Analysis and optimization
Now that you have the data from your quantitative question and your follow-up question, it's time to analyze the results.
You'll notice that this analysis step should be done periodically so that you can quickly analyze the feedback collected and close the loop with your client.
As you might imagine, analysis is the key step in identifying which touchpoints are weak and planning improvements based on this feedback. Of course, capturing this data has an ultimate goal: taking action to improve your relationship with your customer .
Therefore, this final step requires three main actions:
- Analyze your results: what do the numbers say about your situation?
- Act on the results: What can we do to improve the situation?
- Optimize research: how can we gather even more assertive data?
Conclusion
CSAT surveys are an excellent tool for measuring customer satisfaction at specific touchpoints. This specificity allows a company to improve very tangible and targeted aspects of its business. Furthermore, CSAT scores show teams the impact of their actions on customers .
Unlike NPS , CSAT doesn't provide an overall view of the customer experience or loyalty . Instead, it simply tells you how your customer feels about specific interactions with your service.
Even if a customer says they had a good experience with your support team, you don't know if they would recommend your company to friends or family.
What you need to keep in mind is that no single measurement can adequately address all the elements you seek to address in terms of customer satisfaction and experience.
Therefore, you need to combine different customer experience metrics and discover, through testing, which one is most effective for your company.
Continue improving month after month, and you'll see solid returns in customer satisfaction growth and the growth of your business. If you need help creating a comprehensive customer experience , schedule a free assessment with our expert!