What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score?

Date
September 23, 2024
Read Time
2-3 minutes
Category
Customer Experience

No matter what industry you are in — including automotive, retail, and finance — it is vital to understand and be able to measure customer satisfaction. A key performance indicator (KPI) that helps you gauge customer sentiment and quantify customer satisfaction is the Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score.

boostCX is a leading customer experience management platform that partners with businesses to provide the tools needed to measure, analyze, and improve their CSAT scores, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and enhance the overall customer experience. If you want to know — what is a CSAT score or how to calculate your score — boostCX is here to help.

What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score?

A CSAT score is a customer satisfaction KPI that measures how satisfied customers are with a particular product, service, or experience with your company. This metric is typically obtained through customer surveys that ask customers to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5 that ranges from Very Unsatisfied  to Very Satisfied. The majority of customer satisfaction surveys ask questions like — how satisfied are you with our products and services? CSAT scores provide valuable insights into customer sentiment that allow businesses to identify potential pain points in the customer journey and track progress over time.

How to Calculate Your CSAT Score

Calculating your CSAT score involves simple math. The first step is to gather the responses from your customer satisfaction survey and determine the number of responses that fall into the Satisfied or Very Satisfied categories — represented by customer scores of 4 or 5 on a standard 5-point scale. Your own scale may vary depending on how you create your survey. Divide the number of positive responses by the total number of survey responses and multiply by 100 to express the CSAT score as a percentage.

CSAT Score = (Number of Positive Responses / Total Number of Responses) x 100

For example — if you received 80 positive responses out of 100 total survey responses, your CSAT score would be 80% — which points to a high level of customer satisfaction.

What is a Good CSAT Score for Your Business?

A Good CSAT score will vary depending on the industry and specific context of your survey — but in general, a score above 75% is considered favorable. A score below 60% is considered Poor by most standards and would indicate that there are issues with your product, service, or customer experience that need to be addressed. Secondary questions added to the CSAT survey that provide customers with the opportunity to highlight why they gave your business that score can help you identify pain points.

It is essential to benchmark your score against industry averages and your own historical data to gain a more accurate understanding of your performance compared to competitors and to measure improvements. For example — in the automotive industry, a CSAT score of 80% might be considered good, while in the retail industry, a score of 85% or higher might be the base expectation.

Examples of Good CSAT Scores by Industry

  • Automotive - 78%
  • Banks - 78%
  • Computer Software - 76%
  • Credit Unions - 77%
  • Restaurants - 79%
  • Internet E-Commerce - 78%
  • Life Insurance - 78%
  • Healthcare - 76%
  • Retail - 78%
  • Hotels - 73%
  • Shipping - 76%
  • Financial Advisors - 77%
  • Utilities Providers - 72%

It is important to understand and actively manage your CSAT score to help build strong customer relationships and drive business success. By partnering with boostCX, you gain access to powerful tools and analytics that help you capture customer feedback, analyze trends, and implement strategies to enhance the overall customer experience. Remember — a satisfied customer is more likely to become a loyal customer and advocate for your brand.