8 CSAT Questions to Improve Your Business

The Customer Satisfaction Score, or CSAT, gives businesses a measurable way to assess customer sentiment. This is a useful tool for assessing performance year over year and making sure you’re on track. CSAT can be used to assess many different things, and the right CSAT questions can give you the information you need. Here are 8 CSAT questions to explore and improve any part of your business.

What is CSAT?

Like other customer satisfaction metrics, CSAT uses a simple question that is scored with a number and percentage. You may have also heard of NPS^®, another popular customer satisfaction metric. CSAT and NPS are similar metrics, but they are used differently. CSAT asks customers to rank a particular item or experience on a scale from one to five (or one to ten). Then, you can calculate your total CSAT percentage with the following equation;

( [number of responses answering 4 or 5 out of 5] / [total number of responses] ) x 100

How to Use CSAT

You might use a CSAT survey to assess a particular part of your business, or overall customer sentiment. Since CSAT provides only numerical data, it’s ideal to use an open-ended follow-up question as well. Fewer customers will answer this question, but it will give you more details about what you can actually improve.

8 CSAT Questions to Improve Your Business

1. Overall, how do you feel about our business?

Not good at all.
Not good.
Neutral
Good.
Great!

If you’ve recently had issues with your public image or a particular problem has upset customers, this is a good way to see how you’ve recovered, or work that still needs to be done. If you depend on a small, but loyal following, this can also be useful to make sure you’re keeping your fans happy.

2. How was your most recent visit?

Terrible
Not good
Neutral
Good
Excellent

This will be most useful for businesses with physical locations, but you might add the phrase “to our website” or “to our online store” to suit your online business. Use this CSAT question regularly to assess your customer experience over time. No one performs perfectly all the time, so you’ll get some negative responses, but the goal is to see if your customer experience is improving, holding strong, or declining over time.

3. How satisfied were you with our product?

Not satisfied at all
Not satisfied
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
Satisfied
Very Satisfied

You can use this question to see how a specific product performs. Try this with your beta testers or first adopters, or right after a product’s introduction to see how it’s doing.

4. How would you rate our newsletter?

Not helpful at all
Not helpful
Neutral
Helpful
Very helpful

Are your emails really working? This is a good surface-level question to check. If your emails or newsletters aren’t designed to solve problems, but rather to provide engaging or interesting content, you might change the wording on the responses to “interesting,” “informative” or “enjoyable.”

5. How was your experience with our website?

Very bad
Bad
Neither good nor bad
Good
Great!

Your website is an important part of your marketing strategy and your overall customer experience. If your website isn’t up to par—especially if you’re selling products online—you should know about it.

6. How would you rate your experience with our customer service department?

Not good at all
Not good
Neutral
Good
Very Good

If your customer has a question or a problem, it is important that they can get it resolved quickly. Solving problems is an even more important part of the customer experience than providing excellent service the first time. Use this CSAT question as a follow-up to a customer service inquiry to see how your department is doing.

7. How would you rate the event you recently attended?

Horrible
Bad
Neither good nor bad
Good
Great!

Events can help you strengthen customer relationships, build your public image, advertise, and more. If events are an important part of your business, you should know whether or not they are working for your customers.

8. Did our business meet your expectations?

My expectations were not met at all
My expectations were not met
Some expectations were met, others were not
My expectations were met
My expectations were exceeded

Asking about a customer’s expectations is a bit different from asking about their opinion. For example, if your customer has low overall expectations, and you exceed them, they may give you a positive rating on what is actually a mediocre experience. Or, if you overpromise and underdeliver, you might still provide a good experience, but your customer will be disappointed. Changing the CSAT question wording slightly will help you know if your customers’ perceptions are inline with what you really provide.

Think carefully about how your customer will interpret the wording of your question, as well as the responses, and when and how you ask. If you are asking about a customer’s online purchase, the CSAT question might be most effective with a confirmation email. Or, if you’re asking about a customer’s website experience, a direct message on the website might be best. Whatever questions or methods you use, keep them consistent so you can compare results year over year accurately.