In the world of customer contact and customer experience CSAT is a well-known concept. It is a KPI that measures how satisfied your customer is with a product, service or a specific moment in the customer journey. But why is this so important? And what are the advantages of CSAT? You can read about it below!
What does it mean?
The CSAT, which stands for ‘Customer Satisfaction Score’, is a KPI that is used to measure customer satisfaction. This allows you to easily and quickly measure how satisfied your customers are with for example your product or service. This is short term happiness. Namely: How satisfied is the customer following a specific interaction? The question is therefore simply: ‘How satisfied are you with [subject/moment]? As a respondent it takes little time or effort to answer the question and it gives you as an organization very useful information!
The power of this KPI
The strength of CSAT is that it can be used for many different subjects. So you can specifically measure each touchpoint of the customer journey. From an order in the webshop to a call with the helpdesk. And when CSAT is applied to every touchpoint, you can see exactly when your customers are dissatisfied. This enables you to make improvements afterwards. That is how you work on that perfect customer experience!
Do you still not score high with the CSAT? That’s okay. When you receive low scores, ask the customer if he or she wants to explain this. You can use this feedback to optimize processes. This way the problem can be solved and prevented at the next customer. Subsequently, answer the customer who gave you that golden tip! With this you show that you take the feedback of your customers seriously and this is highly appreciated. We call this tactic Closed Loop Feedback.
How to calculate the CSAT?
The CSAT does not have a mandatory answer scale, but the most commonly used scale for the CSAT question is the 5 point scale with the following options: Very dissatisfied / Dissatisfied / Neutral / Satisfied / Very satisfied. You then calculate the score by dividing the number of respondents who gave the answer 4 (satisfied) and 5 (very satisfied) by the total number of respondents. The result is the percentage of satisfied and very satisfied customers.
Why not a 10 point scale?
The explanation above showed a 5 point scale. Another option is to be a 10 point scale. This scale is used less often, because the answers are too varied when filled in by different nationalities. In this article from Psychical Science you can see that it can be different per culture how consumers express their satisfaction. What an American might find ‘very excellent’ (and therefore a 10), someone from Japan will simply rate ‘good’ (for example, an 8). These differences in scoring nature are deeply rooted in the culture of a country or continent. This is partly due to the fact that Western countries, for example, have an individualistic culture and Asian countries, on the other hand, have a collectivistic culture. In order to get a result that is as specific as possible, cultural differences will have to be taken into account.
For example, we see that in the NPS (Net Promoter Score) a European variant has even been developed because of the difference between the scoring nature of America and Europe. In the European variant of the NPS, 8, 9 and 10 are seen as promoters instead of only 9 and 10.
Tip: Instead of using a scale of text answers, use animations to indicate satisfaction. Indeed, any nationality would click an angry smiley if they are dissatisfied and a happy one if they are satisfied!