CSAT Survey Best Practices

What do customers think about your brand? Are they satisfied with your customer service? Do they think there are areas where you could improve? Knowing the answers to these questions is critical in your efforts to win new customers and maintain existing ones, because when your customers aren’t satisfied, you risk losing business to your competitors.

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys allow your brand to ask customers whether or not they are happy with your products and services, and learn the key drivers behind their satisfaction and dissatisfaction. CSAT surveys are also an effective way of engaging with your customers to demonstrate that you value their opinions, which helps build customer loyalty.

Getting the most value from your CSAT surveys

When conducting a CSAT survey, it’s important that your goal isn’t just to collect customer feedback - it should be collecting actionable feedback that enables you to drive improvements to your customer experience.

Long surveys that are deployed months after a customer’s interaction with your brand will result in low participation and less detailed, accurate answers. In this blog, we’ll share three tips for creating surveys your customers won’t mind doing and for collecting actionable feedback:

1. Keep your surveys short
2. Ask the right questions
3. Get the timing right

1. Keep your surveys short

Customers are less likely to participate in long surveys, providing you with less data and insights about where you are excelling and where you need to make improvements. Keep your surveys short by asking 5-10 questions about:

• Service delivery
• Satisfaction and retention
• Net promoter score (NPS)

2. Ask the right questions

Use as many rating scale questions as possible (strongly disagree - strongly agree or not at all likely - extremely likely). This makes it easier and faster for customers to respond than when asking open-ended questions - which will drive participation.

Another important benefit of using rating scales is that these questions are scored, which allows you to easily identify which areas of improvement need to be prioritized, and then measure and track satisfaction levels over time. You can directly tie improvements to initiatives that were implemented to have a positive impact on customer experience, to see what’s working and what’s not.

Example of questions to use for rating scales:

• Service representatives are well trained. 
• Account manager responds to my inquiries in a timely manner.

• How often do you typically use the product?
• Overall, how satisfied are you with your new product?

• How likely would you be to recommend the product to a colleague or friend?
• How likely would you be to recommend the company to a colleague or friend?

3. Get the timing right

The longer you wait to deploy a survey, the less likely customers are to participate and the feedback you collect may be less accurate and detailed. Some tips for ensuring customers participate quickly and you collect more actionable insights are:

• Ensure customer service related surveys are completed within five days of interacting with your brand
• Provide a link to your survey on a receipt if applicable
• Have your customer service reps promote the survey and explain the details/deadlines
• Include an incentive

Conclusion

Customer satisfaction plays a crucial role in your business. Using CSAT surveys to collect feedback and take action to drive improvements, is one of the best ways to deliver excellent customer experience and be a standout amongst your competitors. In order for you to improve customer participation in surveys and collect the most actionable feedback we recommend using these three tips:

1. Keep your CSAT surveys short
2. Ask the right questions
3. Get the timing right