CSAT Surveys: How to Measure Customer Satisfaction After Every Chat and Ticket
You can't improve support you don't measure, and the simplest measure of all is to ask customers whether you helped. That's what a CSAT survey does. This guide explains what CSAT is, how to calculate it, how to get people to answer, and what to do with the results.
What is CSAT?
CSAT (customer satisfaction score) measures how happy customers were with a specific interaction: one chat, one ticket, one call. You ask a single question right after it ends, such as "How did we do?", and count how many people answered positively.
It's different from:
- NPS, which asks how likely someone is to recommend your company overall. It's about the relationship, not one conversation.
- CES (customer effort score), which asks how easy it was to get help.
For a support team, CSAT is the most useful of the three because it ties feedback to a specific conversation and a specific agent.
How to calculate CSAT
The formula is simple:
CSAT = positive ratings ÷ total ratings × 100
If 90 customers answered and 81 gave a thumbs up, your CSAT is 90%. With a 1 to 5 scale, count 4s and 5s as positive.
Only count people who answered. Customers who ignore the survey aren't happy or unhappy; they're unknown.
Thumbs up or a 5-point scale?
A two-option survey (👍 / 👎) gets more responses because it takes one tap. A 1 to 5 scale gives more detail but more people skip it. For small teams, the simpler survey with an optional comment box usually wins: you get more answers, and the comments tell you the "why".
When to send the survey
Timing makes a big difference to how many people reply:
- Live chat: ask at the end of the chat, in the chat itself. The customer is still there and it takes one click.
- Tickets and email: send the survey when the ticket is solved, or a few hours later if fixes often need time to confirm. Wait too long and people forget the details.
- Don't over-survey. One survey per resolved ticket is plenty.
In our help desk, you can switch on an emailed "How did we do? 👍 / 👎" survey for solved tickets and choose how many hours after solving it goes out. Chats can be rated with a thumbs up or down right in the chat widget.
What's a good CSAT score?
It depends on your industry and channel, but most support teams aim for 80% or higher, and live chat often scores higher than email because it's faster. More useful than comparing with others is tracking your own trend: is this month better than last month?
How to get more people to answer
- Keep it to one question. Add an optional comment box, nothing more.
- Ask at the right moment (see above).
- Make it one click. Rating straight from the email or chat beats a separate survey page with five questions.
- Show you read them. Reply to negative comments. Customers who see their feedback acted on are more likely to answer next time.
Turn ratings into better support
Collecting ratings is the easy part. The value comes from reviewing them:
- Read every negative rating each week. Group them: slow reply, wrong answer, policy problem, product bug. The biggest group is your next project.
- Look for slow replies. If unhappy ratings cluster around long waits, work on reducing first response time before anything else.
- Fix the knowledge gaps. If customers are unhappy because answers were wrong or incomplete, the fix is often a better help article. See how to build a knowledge base customers actually use.
- Coach, don't blame. Agent-level CSAT is useful for spotting who needs help with tone or product knowledge, but a single bad rating is often about the policy, not the person.
- Share the good ones. Positive comments are great for team morale, and with permission they make strong testimonials.
CSAT and your targets
CSAT works best alongside speed targets. Response-time goals tell you whether you answered quickly; CSAT tells you whether the answer was any good. Our guide to customer support SLAs for small teams shows how to set both.
Start measuring today
A one-question survey takes minutes to switch on and gives you a steady stream of honest feedback. Start free, turn on the satisfaction survey in Settings, and check your first results in Reports next week.