Customer Satisfaction Score - CSAT
Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT) is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals.
What can a customer satisfaction survey help with?
- As important as it is to identify the unhappy customers, it is equally necessary to identify the happy ones. This indirectly prioritizes customer success which in time will lead to more revenue for the company and these are the customers who usually help a product grow through word of mouth marketing. As always, it is always smarter to retain a customer than acquire a new one.
- What better way to get feedback about stuff that could be improved in your product than listening to unhappy customer’s negative review to a CSAT survey.
- It also is a major factor while pitching to customers as it helps the team understand customer expectations. It is always good to know how customers might react than venturing into the void.
When to use a customer satisfaction survey?
After milestones in a customer journey: This is how Nils Vinje, former VP of Customer Success at Rainforest QA, puts it:
"The best time to send a customer satisfaction survey is after a meaningful part of the customer lifecycle is completed. For example, sending a satisfaction survey at the end of the customer's onboarding will help you capture valuable feedback on how to improve the onboarding experience.
At this point, the customer likely has made up their mind on whether or not your solution solves their problem, and if it doesn't, you need to know that -- ASAP."
After interacting with the Support Team: This is the most common point of using a CSAT survey as it helps understand the customer’s perspective. Ironically, the scoring received at this point should also not be taken into consideration very seriously as customers in most cases tend to react than respond.