Are you wondering what your users think of your product? Are you brainstorming ways to improve your customer experience? We have a recommendation: ask your users directly. Send CSAT (customer satisfaction) surveys to collect feedback and measure satisfaction.
In this blog, you’ll learn the pros and cons of CSAT surveys, best practices for using them, and more.
What is a CSAT survey?
A CSAT survey measures user satisfaction with your products, services, or business in general. It’s one of the most common user experience (UX) metrics, along with net promoter score (NPS) surveys and standardized user experience percentile rank questionnaires (SUPR-Q).
CSAT questions are usually broad. They’re typically framed like, “How satisfied are you with X?” where X might be “the company” or “your experience.” Respondents can answer on a scale from one to five, where one means “very unsatisfied” and five means “very satisfied.”
To calculate your detailed CSAT score, divide the total number of customers who responded with fours and fives (“satisfied” and “very satisfied”) by the total number of responses. Multiply that number by 100 for your detailed CSAT score.
Benefits of using CSAT surveys
CSAT surveys are popular because of their intuitive design and ease of use. The numbers are also easy to interpret. A higher score is better, while a lower score shows room for improvement. CSAT surveys give businesses an overall picture of the value they’re providing and the quality of the customer experience.
Aside from ease of use, CSAT surveys can help businesses uncover valuable information about their users. You can find pain points along your customer journey and determine what to improve or change.
Plus, sending CSAT surveys to your users at key points shows them that you care. You’re making an effort to improve your product and their customer experience. And of course, your CSAT score tells you at a glance how happy your users are with your product. Happy customers spread positive word-of-mouth and stay loyal to your brand.
Challenges of using CSAT surveys
Customer feedback extracted from CSAT surveys can be too general. It can be tough to pin down what users like or don’t like. If someone responds to your CSAT survey with a 3 out of 5, you’ll need to dig deeper to figure out why.
Be mindful of unintentionally influencing your survey results. Remain neutral with your questions. “How amazing is our new feature?” is biased; “how would you rate our new feature?” is not. Biased language can skew results, make respondents feel pressured to respond a certain way, or dissuade them from answering the survey at all.
Pay attention to the structure and words used in your questions, too. Avoid asking double-barreled questions, which talk about multiple issues. “Was it easy to set up your account, and how do you like it so far?” is a perfect example of this problem. Your respondents can only respond to one issue with their rating.
CSAT survey best practices
How you craft and deliver your surveys affects the number and quality of responses you get back. Follow these CSAT survey best practices to get accurate responses.
Get right to the point
Surveys ask people to take time out of their day to provide feedback for your business. Keeping your surveys brief and concise is essential for increasing your response rates. Stick to no more than three close-ended CSAT questions. You can always include optional open-ended questions to invite longer, more detailed responses.
Your questions should also be straightforward. Write in simple language free of jargon, technical terms, or acronyms. Try to match how your audience speaks. This will help remove any obstacles that will prevent your users from answering your survey.
Choose the best channels to distribute your survey
You have multiple options for distributing your CSAT survey to your users. Email allows you to personalize your message, while social media can reach a bigger audience. Other options include chatbots, SMS texts and website popups.
One of the best channels, however, is right within your product. In-product surveys let you collect responses while you’re still on your user’s mind. They can be more detailed and honest with their answer. That’s what Sprig’s in-product Surveys are designed to do — get actionable insights from your users in real-time.
Send CSAT surveys at the right time
When to send your survey depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you want to evaluate how a new feature is performing, you might send a CSAT survey after a user tries it out for the first time. Gather their thoughts while the new feature is still on their minds.
To see what a user thinks of their experience with your brand, you have more wiggle room. You might send a CSAT survey after they’ve been using your product for a certain period of time, or after they’ve been a user for one year.
Gather insights from survey responses
When you have hundreds or even thousands of survey responses to sift through, the thought of evaluating all that data can be overwhelming. Let a tool like Sprig’s AI Analysis summarize your findings for you quickly and efficiently.
With Sprig AI, you can instantly turn user feedback into customer experience insights. If you include open-ended questions in your survey, Sprig AI will analyze it and pull the top takeaways for you. This tool also makes it easy to share all that data with your teams.
Follow up with respondents
Your job isn’t over after you’ve gathered insights from your survey responses. Don’t forget to follow up with all the users who answered your survey!
Following up can be a simple “thank you” for responding. You can also follow up with a request for more details, an apology if necessary, or a solution to a problem. A follow-up builds trust and reassures your users that you value their feedback.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with CSAT surveys is failing to act on the insights you gather. You’ve crafted your questions carefully and sent them at the perfect time. You’ve even used a tool like Sprig’s Replays to dive deeper into the user journey and see exactly what’s happening from their point of view.
But unless you take that next step to improve your product, your survey efforts will be wasted.
Other mistakes to watch out for include:
- Bias in your questions. Avoid positive and negative wording that can sway results.
- Leading questions. Be as neutral as possible so you can get more accurate data.
- Distractions. Your survey itself should be minimally designed with easy-to-read fonts. Avoid including illustrations or branded imagery.
- Not optimizing for mobile. You’ll miss out on a lot of your users if they can’t answer your survey on their mobile devices.
- Surveys that don’t work. Test your survey to ensure it works. Then test it again!
Improve customer satisfaction with CSAT surveys
Asking well-crafted questions at the right time can give you a wealth of data on your users’ wants and needs. CSAT surveys are a practical, helpful tool that make data gathering uncomplicated.
Sprig makes the process of writing, surveying and summarizing easy for you. With our In-Product Surveys, you’ll ask for feedback at the right time, every time. Replays offer a more detailed, personal view into user pain points and behavior. Our AI also analyzes your feedback instantly so that you can act on it even faster. Start surveying your users with Sprig.
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