What is the Difference Between CSAT and NPS? 

CSAT and NPS’s primary difference is that CSAT measures a customer's satisfaction with a product or service, and NPS measures customer loyalty.

CSAT and NPS are both a measurement of your customers’ thoughts and opinions about your business, and they are both very different. NPS has a very defined process, whereas CSAT is more fluid. 

Let’s dig into each one. 

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Explained 

Customer experience measurement is a big job but also an extremely important one. Most customer experiences have multiple touchpoints, sometimes with different channels and even with different objectives. 

To measure CSAT, you want to directly ask your customers to rate their level of satisfaction right after each interaction with your organization. It’s a right here, right now a thing. You want to ask when the experience is fresh in their mind, so you get the most accurate answer. 

Here’s the thing with CSAT — There’s no standard way to ask how satisfied a customer is, but it could be something like this: 

How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the product or service you received?”

You will ask your customers to use the following 1 to 5 scale:

1. Very unsatisfied
2. Unsatisfied
3. Neutral
4. Satisfied
5. Very satisfied

You could go even further and ask them to rate you on a score of 1 to 5 on the following:

1. Level of knowledge
2. Effective communication
3. Professionalism
4. Responsiveness
5. Understanding of the issue
6. Timely resolution
7. Effectiveness of the resolution

These could be done through:

• In-App or Website Surveys: This way will get you the highest response rate because customers can give their opinion while they are still engaging with your company, so it’s super easy, almost effortless for them. Simply, just add a feedback bar on your website, with two questions at most.
• Email Surveys: Email surveys are great because you can get a more in-depth answer, making it a great way to accurately measure customer satisfaction and determine what went right and what went wrong. There are several free tools, like Google Forms, that can be used for creating email surveys.
  

• Completed Service Surveys: You should ask immediately after the delivery of a product or service. You could send these by email, or if it was email support, have a rating link attached to quickly get feedback. You could do this for live chat support, too.  After the chat has ended, invite them to give a thumbs up or thumbs down and give additional feedback comments.

OK, you’ve collected all these surveys and calculated the numbers, and have the results. Now what? Is your CSAT score good or bad? Unfortunately, there’s no concrete answer to that, but a general rule of thumb is to get your customer satisfaction as close to 100% as possible. 

After collecting the data for some time, you will have your own goals where you want your numbers to be and work on increasing your CSAT numbers for totally out-of-this-world customer satisfaction.

What is Net Promoter Score (NPS)? 

Net Promoter Score measures your customers’ experience and predicts your business’s growth. It’s a proven matrix that has reshaped the business world and gives a measurement for customer experience management programs worldwide.

NPS measures the loyalty your customers have to your company. NPS scores are measured with a survey that is just a single question and reported with a number from -100 to +100, a higher score is what you’re trying to attain.

Here’s the all-important single question that you ask:

How likely is it that you would recommend your product or services to a friend or colleague?

• Promoters (score 9-10) are typically loyal and enthusiastic customers who will keep buying and referring others, fueling growth.
• Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied with your service but not happy enough to be considered promoters and are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
• Detractors (score 0-6) are customers who are unhappy and unlikely to buy from you again, have the ability to damage your brand with negative word-of-mouth.

You then subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters to get your Net Promoter Score, ranging from a low of -100 (if every customer surveyed is a Detractor) to a high of 100 (if every customer surveyed is a Promoter).

What’s a good (or bad) NPS? Great question! NPS scoring goes like this:

• The worst score is -100. If everyone gives you a 0, 100% of people are detractors, so -100. 
• The highest score is +100. If everyone gives you a 10, 100% of people are promoters, so +100. 
• With that said, any score above zero is good, anything above +50 is excellent, and anything over +70 is superb, world-class.

NPS is largely considered the leading indicator of future growth. You have a larger number of advocates for your business which also equates to lower customer acquisition costs. You will have your advocates referring others and giving positive word-of-mouth for you.

You could follow up with a second question to get more details about why they gave you that rating. This question is: What's the most important reason for your score? 

What to Do With Your Results 

OK, you’ve gotten your CSAT and NPS scores. Now what? 

Now you analyze that data and find ways to improve. It’s important to set out clear goals around what you’re measuring so that you can put together a clear plan of action to improve. Ask yourself questions like:

• What areas of your business are getting the lowest scores?
• Where is your customers’ affinity for your business fundraising, and where is it lower than you’d like? 
• Is additional training needed in some areas? 
• Should you outsource your customer service to the pros so your employees could focus on more of your core business tasks? 
• Does your website need revamping to make it more user-friendly?

You could also use this data to cross-sell or upsell your brand advocates since they already love and trust your business they’re likely to buy from you again! It’s also a great time to ask for referrals! You know that old saying ask and you shall receive? Yes, it works when asking for referrals. It could sound something like, “Thank you so much for your survey response. We really appreciate it! Do you know anybody else we could also make happy with our products or services that you could refer to us? We’re a growing brand, and we love referrals! (insert smiley face).”

Summing It Up 

By creating more promoters and fewer detractors, you can easily scale your business and take it to the next level. It all starts with excellent customer service. When your company has the reputation of providing high-end totally kick-ass customer service, it gives you the advantage to charge a little more for your products and services because your buyers will pay a premium to feel appreciated and happily taken care of.

CSAT (and CES and NPS) scores are just numbers to give you an idea of where your business stands so that you could take action and open the doors to a better customer experience. Collect the data consistently at the same time every time for the most accurate analysis.  

Remember, happy employees committed to your brand are more likely to provide excellent customer service since they are also your brand advocates. Hire an awesome team of people with the attitudes and goals that align with your company’s culture, and the awesomeness will spill onto your customers.

But knowing the status of your customer experience really is just the first step. It’s what you do with those scores to improve that experience that matters. 

Need a totally awesome customer service team? Contact us, and we’ll show you the AwesomeCX.com way. 

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherelliott/2018/07/11/these-companies-have-the-best-customer-service-heres-why/?sh=36bc7e28b80a

https://www.netpromoter.com/know/

https://hbr.org/2003/12/the-one-number-you-need-to-grow