What is CSATand How Do You Measure It?
Do you really know how your customers feel about your customer service and the quality of your products or services? It’s not something you want to guess.
There’s an easy way to know, and it’s by getting your customer satisfaction scores, otherwise known as CSAT. Simply put, CSAT is how happy or unhappy your customers are with your company. It’s a score of their satisfaction with your products or services. It should be measured any time there is customer interaction.
Customer experience involves all the different ways in which your business interacts with a customer and the interactions with the business’s products or service. Organizations lose $338.5 billion per year globally due to bad customer service. American consumers are willing to spend more on companies that get the service right. Making sure your customers are happy with your products and services is vital to your business’s success.
Why Should You Measure Your Customer Satisfaction?
If you don’t measure customer satisfaction, how could you ever know that a customer is unhappy so you could fix what went wrong and make it go right in the future?
Unhappy customers won’t be loyal to your business which means they won’t be repeat customers; even worse they will normally tell others about their bad experience with your company which could damage your brand's reputation. So this score is super important, and you should make it a priority to know. Your business will be in trouble if your customers churn faster than you acquire new customers.
On the flip side, you can measure happy, satisfied customers and what went right so you can create more happy customers.
When Should You Measure CSAT?
To stay at the top of your customer service game, you should be asking for your customers’ satisfaction level anytime they have any kind of interaction with your company. This could be:
- At the time of purchase or anytime during the online checkout process.
- Anytime they call and speak with a customer service representative (CSR).
- During email correspondence.
- After the purchase is complete.
When you get this data at all the different interaction times, you can pinpoint the areas that need improvement and the areas that are doing well. You can analyze what’s going right and what’s not, then use that data to improve your process.
How Do You Measure CSAT?
You measure it simply through customer satisfaction surveys. There’s no industry standard for asking how satisfied a customer is, but it could go 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:
- Very unsatisfied
- Unsatisfied
- Neutral
- Satisfied
- Very satisfied
You could go even further and ask them to rate you on a score of 1-5, on:
- Level of knowledge
- Effective communication
- Professionalism
- Responsiveness
- Understanding of the issue
- Timely resolution
- Effectiveness of the resolution
Once you get your response from your customers, here is how you measure your score:
Take the number of 4- and 5-star ratings (which are your satisfied customers) and divide the number of survey responses x 100. The solution is the percentage of satisfied customers.
Evidence shows that using the two highest values on the customer feedback surveys is the most accurate predictor of customer retention; you only include 4 (satisfied) responses and 5 (very satisfied) in the calculation.
This score shows how satisfied or dissatisfied customers are with a particular product or service or interaction with your company —whatever the survey is measuring.
Snail mail is out. Here are some easy ways to get your CSAT survey requests to your customers:
- In-App or Website Surveys: This method will get the highest response rate because customers can give their opinion while they are still engaging with your company. To do this, just add a feedback bar on your website, with two questions at most. It makes it almost effortless for your customers.
- Email Surveys: Email surveys are a great way to accurately measure customer satisfaction because they offer more in-depth insights. To increase the response rate, be bold, let them know their opinion really matters to you, your business is your passion, and you would love their honest opinion. There are several free tools, like Google Forms, that can be used for creating email surveys.
- Completed Service Surveys: These surveys are focused on customer satisfaction after receiving a provided service. You should ask immediately after delivery when the full experience is still fresh in their minds. You could send these by email, or if it was email support, have a rating link attached to get feedback quickly or for a live chat after the chat has ended, inviting them for a thumbs up or down and a comment section for additional feedback.
Again, be real and open with them. Let them know how much you truly care about your business and their satisfaction, so their honest feedback is important to you. They’re more likely to give it to you when they feel it’s authentic and coming from the heart.
These surveys should be fast and easy for your customers to take, wherever they are. That means the survey should be mobile optimized. If someone is on their phone when they open your survey and it’s poorly formatted for mobile devices or fails to load entirely, they will most likely just back out, and you won’t get the answers you’re wanting and needing.
What’s a Good CSAT Score?
So you’ve collected all these surveys and calculated the numbers, and have the results. Now what? How can you tell if your CSAT score is good or bad? 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 total customer satisfaction.
When you track and understand how customer satisfaction relates to revenue, you can start to make a real impact. Tracking overall customer profitability should be the next step in making the customer experience a long-term success strategy.
Taking Action With Your CSAT Results
When you get this data and analyze it, take action. Figure out what’s working, what’s not, and what you need to change and implement. Here are some ideas:
- You could look at each sector individually to see if there’s one area of your business that might be holding you back from total customer satisfaction.
- Your sales reps can use post-purchase feedback to perfect their sales process and increase their individual wins.
- You could use product feedback to create new and improve existing features.
- Customer service reps could individually be given more direction and training on how to provide exceptional 5-star customer service.
- Your marketing team can run competitive loss surveys to improve future campaigns.
CSAT Best Practices
When it comes to best practices for measuring your CSAT, there are really only two things you need to remember:
- Be consistent: To make sure your numbers are accurate for your business, you need to be consistent. This means asking the same questions at the same time. If not, it’s like comparing apples to oranges. They’re incomparable, and you will just be wasting your time.
- Ask targeted survey questions: When you’re coming up with your survey questions, really think about the product or service that you’re asking about at that time. Make your questions clear and easy to understand, so they are really answering the question you’re asking. Remember, you’re trying to get answers that will help you fix areas that are in need to improve your total customer satisfaction.
The Wrap-Up
CSAT is an excellent way to get your customers’ thoughts and feedback on all the areas of your business. Finding out what’s really on their hearts and minds will give you the data you need to improve. While Awesome employees will help you keep your business going, true success comes from having totally happy customers that are loyal to your brand – sometimes that takes some repositioning and additional training.
Consistently getting your customers’ feedback helps you measure your business plans and prepares for huge success. Ask at the right time and in the right place. Make it as easy as possible for them, so you get a high response rate. Analyze the data to find the areas that need improvement and implement changes to achieve total customer satisfaction.
We could help you achieve your total customer satisfaction by handling all of your customer service needs. Contact us today, and we’ll show you the Awesome CX way!
Sources: