Customer Satisfaction Score

The other approach for measuring customer satisfaction is to use a single question in the survey to rate customer satisfaction. There has been lots of research over the year to determine which is the best question to ask.

This does not suffer from the issue above and attempts to directly measure a customer’s satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is the most straightforward of the customer satisfaction survey methodologies, and it measures customer satisfaction with a business, purchase, or interaction. It’s calculated by asking a question, such as “How satisfied were you with your experience?” There’s a corresponding survey scale, which can be 1 – 3, 1 – 5, or 1 – 10.

The following two questions have become quite popular as customer satisfaction score questions:

Please think about all of your experiences with Company X. Please rate your overall satisfaction in your dealings with them, where 10 is very satisfied and 1 is very dissatisfied?

How likely is it that you would recommend Company X to a friend or colleague, where 10 is very likely and 1 is very unlikely?

Benefits

A big strength of Customer Satisfaction Score lies in its simplicity: It’s an easy way to close the loop on a customer interaction and determine whether or not it was effective in producing customer happiness.

If for some reason the experience wasn’t satisfactory, it’s easy to pinpoint that moment and take actions to remedy the experience.

Not only that, but you can track customer satisfaction across the customer lifecycle very simply using Customer Satisfaction Score.

Since it’s such a quick survey, you can ask it across multiple experiences during a customer’s journey and get a big-picture view of how your customer feels at various touch points during the process.

This makes it easier to find potential bottlenecks and improve the customer experience.

What Is a Good Customer Satisfaction Score?

While CSAT scores vary by industry, a good score will typically fall between 75% and 85%. Since CSAT measures only your promoter scores, it’s difficult to obtain a near-perfect score. Having a score of 75% means that three out of every four customers gave you a positive score instead of a negative or neutral one.

CSAT Score by Industry

Below are industry benchmarks for CSAT score, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

1. Apparel:                                                          79
2. Automobiles and Light Vehicles:                   82
3. Banks:                                                             81
4. Breweries:                                                       85
5. Cellular Telephones:                                       79
6. Computer Software:                                        79
7. Consumer Shipping:                                       78
8. Credit Unions:                                                81
9. Financial Advisors:                                         80
10. Full-Service Restaurants:                               81
11. Hotels:                                                             76
12. Internet Retail:                                                80
13. Internet Travel Services:                                78
14. Life Insurance:                                                80
15. Specialty Retail Stores:                                  78