Customer satisfaction score, defined and worked out
The most useful survey number for a small business, and the one whose definition you have to write down before you start.
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Customer satisfaction score, in one sentence
CSAT, or customer satisfaction score, is the percentage of surveyed customers who picked one of the top answers when asked how satisfied they were with a specific experience.
The question is about one thing that just happened: a visit, a repair, a delivery. That specificity is the point of the measure and the main reason it is easier to act on than a loyalty score.
There is no standard scale, which is a genuine weakness. Five point scales are common, seven point scales exist, and what counts as a top box varies between the people reporting it. A CSAT of 82 percent means nothing until you know how many points were on the scale and which of them were counted as satisfied.
Because the scale is yours, the number is only ever comparable to itself. Write the exact question and the exact scale down, keep them, and never change either halfway through a year of measurement.
Working out CSAT on a five point scale
Ask one question after the job: how satisfied were you, from 1 for very dissatisfied to 5 for very satisfied. Count the top two answers as satisfied.
- Answered 5, very satisfied
- 96
- Answered 4, satisfied
- 54
- Answered 3, 2 or 1
- 50
- Total replies
- 200
96 plus 54 is 150 satisfied answers out of 200, so CSAT is 75 percent. Counting only the 5s, which plenty of teams do, gives 48 percent for exactly the same month. Both are defensible and they are not the same number, which is precisely why the definition has to be written down somewhere.
Report the response rate beside the score, always. A CSAT of 75 percent from 200 replies out of 1,900 jobs is a statement about the 200 people who felt strongly enough to answer, and the quiet majority is not in it anywhere.
Why it is the most actionable number here
CSAT tells you where in the week your problem is. Tag each reply with the day, the shift or the technician, and within a month or two the low scores cluster somewhere specific. A star rating never gives you that, because it arrives too late and too thinly to group.
It also gives you something to do before a review is ever written. A 2 on a Thursday is a telephone call on Friday, and that call is often the whole difference between a customer who never returns and one who does.
For a business too small for a survey platform, this works on paper. A five point question at the bottom of a job sheet, tallied weekly in a notebook, is a real customer satisfaction programme and costs nothing.
The misconception: CSAT and your star rating should agree
Owners regularly find a CSAT in the high eighties sitting beside a 4.1 star rating and conclude that one of the two must be broken.
They measure different populations at different moments. CSAT samples whoever answers a survey right after the job, which skews towards people you have just spoken to. A star rating accumulates from whoever felt motivated enough to visit a public listing and type, which skews towards both extremes.
The gap between them is information rather than an error. A high CSAT beside a middling public rating usually means the experience is fine and not enough people are being asked to say so publicly.
Customer satisfaction score questions
Five practical questions from owners setting up a survey for the first time.
What is a good CSAT score?
It depends entirely on your scale and your top box definition, so an external benchmark is close to useless. Track your own trend, and be suspicious of a sudden jump: it is more often a change in how you asked than a change in the service.
CSAT or NPS for a small business?
CSAT, if you only run one. It asks about something that just happened, which means the answer points at a shift, a person or a process you can change this week.
How often should I ask?
Once per completed job or visit, and not again. Repeat surveys to the same customer inside a short period lower your response rate and irritate the people most inclined to answer you.
Should the survey link and the review link go in the same message?
They can. Keep the review link unconditional so it reaches every recipient whatever they answered, which is what keeps the ask compliant with Google's policy on selective solicitation.
Does CSAT appear anywhere public?
No. It is yours. Nothing about it shows on a review platform and no customer will ever see it, which is both its limitation and the reason people answer it honestly.
Where CSAT sits among the other review numbers
The public half
Survey privately, ask publicly, reply to both
GetSetReply gathers the reviews your customers do write and has the reply drafted before you open the tab.