You can think of this as your ultimate resource for launching and managing successful CSAT surveys. This guide is designed to streamline the entire process and equip you with everything you need to boost customer satisfaction at every step of the customer journey.

Here’s what you’ll find:

Whether you’re new to CSAT or simply looking to refine your existing strategy, this guide provides everything you need to confidently create, launch, and analyze CSAT surveys. You’ll save time, avoid common mistakes, and be ready to turn customer feedback into actionable insights that lower retention, drive loyalty, and business growth.

CSAT stands for Customer Satisfaction Score, and, as indicated by its name, it tells you how happy your clients are with a recent experience they had with your brand. Calculating CSAT lets you predict customer loyalty and spot weak points in your customer experience program.

Fun fact: Next to Net Promoter Score® and Customer Effort Score, Customer Satisfaction Score is among the most frequently used customer satisfaction metrics.

A CSAT survey usually consists of one main question:

How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received?

Typically, answer options are graded on a scale from 1-5, where 1 means very unsatisfied and 5 represents very satisfied.

The general formula for how you can measure your score after the responses:

We advise you to choose 4 (satisfied) and 5 (very satisfied) answers to implement the formula as it has been shown that the most reliable indicator of customer retention is using the two greatest values on customer feedback surveys.

When we talk about survey channels, we’re referring to the platform or medium you’ll use to send your CSAT survey. This could be email, your website, web app, mobile app, SMS—you name it. But the golden question is: which one’s best for your audience?

The best channel depends on several factors, like your target audience, the stage of the customer journey you're measuring, and the type of interaction you're focusing on.

Simply put, there’s no "one-size-fits-all" answer. But here’s what you should be looking for when choosing the channels you want to push your CSAT surveys:

There is no secret formula - but don’t worry, I’ll give you some best practices to get you started.

1. Align with key customer interactions

CSAT surveys work best when sent after meaningful customer interactions. And unlike NPS®, which might focus on periodic relationship-building, CSAT surveys are most effective in capturing real-time satisfaction. For example, you might send a CSAT survey immediately after customer support interaction, completing a purchase, or using a specific product feature. Naturally, this approach ensures that the feedback reflects the customer's recent experience and provides actionable insights.

2. Consider product and service dynamics

For high-frequency touchpoints like support calls, monthly check-ins, or product usage milestones, CSAT surveys can be sent more frequently to gather feedback on each critical touchpoint. If your customer interactions are less frequent, such as annual service renewals or in-depth consultations, a post-service CSAT survey is more appropriate. Tailor the timing to when customer satisfaction is most relevant to measure.

3. Use Event-Based Triggering

Triggered CSAT surveys are an excellent way to capture specific feedback without adhering to a strict schedule. For example, send a CSAT survey after a product update, a complex service installation, or a billing experience. By triggering surveys based on actions rather than intervals, you gather more contextually relevant feedback.

4. Factor in Seasonal Patterns

Similiar to NPS, CSAT scores can be affected by seasonality.

For example, in retail, satisfaction might fluctuate during peak shopping seasons. If your business sees seasonal trends, consider conducting an annual analysis rather than comparing month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter results. Consistent timing each year—such as surveying after each holiday season—gives you accurate year-over-year comparisons.

When deciding who should receive your CSAT surveys, it’s all about focusing on the customers who can offer the most valuable insights. The goal is to gather feedback that actually drives decisions, which is why segmenting your audience makes sense.

Instead of sending your survey to everyone, target the customers whose feedback will be the most useful. By segmenting based on things like engagement level, subscription tier, or purchase history, you’ll reach the people who have the most experience with your product or service.

Here’s some examples:

1. Recent customer support contacts

CSAT surveys are ideal for gauging satisfaction after customer support interactions, such as a live chat, support call, or email. Sending a survey immediately after these interactions provides real-time feedback on your service quality and will highlight areas for improvement.

2. Post-purchase or post-usage feedback

Consider sending CSAT surveys to customers after a recent purchase or once they’ve had enough time to use a product or service. This approach allows you to understand how satisfied they are with the product experience and identify any potential issues early on

3. Key product or service touchpoints

Target specific touchpoints in the customer journey, such as completing a sign-up, reaching a usage milestone, or renewing a subscription. Segmenting customers based on these touchpoints helps you capture feedback relevant to each stage, whether it’s a first impression or long-term satisfaction.

4. Customers using new features or experiencing product changes

When you introduce a new feature or make updates to a product, targeting CSAT surveys to those actively using these changes can yield insights into user satisfaction with the enhancements. This allows you to fine-tune the experience based on real customer feedback.

5. Regular users with consistent engagement

For ongoing products or services, consider surveying regular users who engage frequently. These customers are likely to offer more detailed feedback because they interact with your product consistently and are familiar with its strengths and areas for improvement.

By strategically targeting your CSAT surveys to customers at these key moments, you gather specific, relevant feedback that can directly influence your service quality and product enhancements, ultimately helping you improve customer satisfaction.

Creating your first CSAT survey is easy, but first, you have to decide which channel you’ll be using. We’ve covered that on the previous section: What is the best channel to ask for CSAT?

So whether you want to send CSAT through email, or place it on your website or mobile app, we’ve got you covered.

Once you decide on which channel you’re going with, feel free to jump to that section:

In the main dashboard, click on the Create new survey button.

From there, pick how you would like to start. We recommend starting with an AI-assisted creation or template library for a swift creation. These will get you up to starting your survey in no time!

If you started with the template library or AI survey creator, you’ll get your survey questions already set for you. You can later edit them to your liking, or add new questions by clicking on “Add new question”. Here you can find a complete list of question and action types.

The CSAT question is typically formulated as “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received?”. But we recommend changing the way you formulate your question to fit your business and the way you communicate with your customers. Below, we’ve selected a few of our favorite ways our customers have formulated their CSAT question to fit their business. Each version simply focuses on slightly different aspects of customer perception, while still holding the core idea of CSAT. We hope these will get you inspired to make your own:

As much as the way you formulate your CSAT question, you can also reconsider the way you ask your CSAT follow-ups. Below you can find a few examples of our favorite ways CSAT follow-up questions were asked:

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 4-5 (satisfied customers): .

Customers in this range indicate high satisfaction, which means they’re generally happy with your product or service. Nevertheless, you should still take this time to follow up. It’s the perfect chance to reinforce their positive experience:

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 3 (neutral customers):

These customers had an average experience, it is important you follow up to understand how you can improve their experience going forward.

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 1-2 (dissatisfied customers):

Clearly the customers with this score are simply dissatisfied. Make sure to follow-up with them as soon as you can to resolve the issue and prevent potential customer churn.

⚠️Important! If you decide to change the range (e.g., switching from 5 smileys to 3, or from 2 thumbs to 7) or the style of your scale (like shifting from a classic rating scale to a shape-based one), all responses previously collected with that question will be deleted and cannot be restored. This is due to the fundamental changes these adjustments make to the data structure. For more information, take a look at this article.

Going into the Configure tab, you can modify settings responsible for identifying the respondents and survey status.

If you want your respondents to be recognized, you have to have a tool selected in the field. There are plenty of tools to choose from including favorites like:

⚠️Important - if you need your responses to be anonymous, go ahead and skip this step.

In the Connect tab, you can also integrate your survey with other apps that you use on a daily basis. This is, of course, optional, but we highly recommend that you take advantage of this feature.

Essentially, integrations will help you automate processes and workflows. For example, you can create triggers based on survey responses to automate support tickets, task assignments, and personalized follow-up actions. The idea here is to have everything in one place, saving you time, improving efficiency, and ensuring that you act on customer feedback right away.

To give you a better idea of what you can do, here are some popular integrations that our customers use:

Hubspot -

The Surivcate and HubSpot integration allows you to:

⚠️Bonus - with the new HubSpot App Cards feature, you can also:

Find out more about the HubSpot integration here.

Slack -

The Surivcate and Slack integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Slack integration here.

Klaviyo -

The Surivcate and Klaviyo integration allows you to:

Find out more about the Klaviyo integration here.

And the most important step to get your survey out there is to share it. In the Share tab, you can adjust the preview, description, and the name the respondents will see when the survey is opened in your browser.

⚠️Important - To share your survey, you will need to create that email in your email service provider and set up the audience there. From there, you can simply follow one of the options below to finish sending your survey:

All you need to do is copy the code generated once you click on the ‘Get your code’ button and paste it into an HTML editor of your software. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. No coding or technical skills required.

⚠️Important - Don’t forget to choose your email software in ‘Responses identification’ to see the names and emails of your respondents.

Tips

There are various ways you can do this in your surveys. If you are running an email CSAT for instance, you can automatically capture respondents' email addresses using software-aware links.

Once your respondents start taking your survey, you’ll need to analyze that data. Here’s how you can start:

Here’s how you can act on the feedback depending on each segment:

High satisfaction (4-5 stars):

They’re happy and satisfied with your product. Here’s some ways you can actively engage with them.

Neutral satisfaction (3 stars):

These customers are on the fence, which means they’re satisfied but not super thrilled. Here’s how you can engage this segment.

Low satisfaction (1-2 stars):

Dissatisfied respondents signal a need for urgent attention. It’s crucial to address their concerns as soon as possible because sometimes it could turn them into your biggest advocates.

And if you’re not a fan of the manual work…as luck would have it, we’ve got some new AI-powered tools to sort of…do the dirty work for you when it comes to taking your data and turning it into actionable insights.

Here you can make great use of our topics feature. Provided you have connected your survey to Insights Hub, it will take all of the feedback and automatically categorize it into different topics. Within every topic, you’ll find the direct feedback that it relates to making it easier for you act on it immediately.

Topics you’ll most often find:

Insights Hub is mainly used to:

For a full guide on how to use it, check this out. But not to leave you empty-handed, here are some ways you can apply it for your CSAT surveys:

And of course on top of that, you get our research assistant. It…assists you with your…research 😀. Find answers to all your questions quickly and effectively just by asking it.

The research assistant takes your feedback and can answer your questions based on:

For a full guide on how to use it, check this out. For now, here’s the top reasons why you should try it out for your CSAT surveys:

To get you on your way, try asking your research assistant some of these questions:

As mentioned earlier, this is a great opportunity to use the momentum and ask your high score respondents for a positive review or testimonial. Using the ‘Thank you’ question type, you can redirect them straight to your favorite review site.

A very popular way of building CSAT surveys is asking different follow-up questions to your respondent based on their previous response.

Survey logic simplifies the creation of different paths for respondents by skipping certain questions based on their previous answers. This allows you to customize the survey experience with tailored question flows and segment users according to their feedback.

As mentioned previously, your CSAT survey comes ‘pre-packaged’ with logic. You can check how each question uses this feature, by simply clicking on the desired question and clicking the ‘Logic’ tab:

If you’d like to use this feature for your newly added questions, it’s quite easy to set up.

Step 1.

Once you’ve added your question and added a Single answer selection or a Dropdown list, as well as the other survey questions, head over to the Logic tab of the question and click on + Add new logic.

Step 2.

Here, you'll see the If answer condition, letting you decide when to apply logic.

You can choose to apply logic if the response is or is not equal to one of the answer choices or when it has any value.

This means you’ve got a lot of possibilities to work with. Here’s a breakdown:

If you select Answer 1 or Answer 2, this logic will work for the respondents who select Answer 1 or Answer 2.

If you select Answer 1 or Answer 2, this logic will work for the respondents who select anything other than Answer 1 and Answer 2, such as Answer 3.

In the main dashboard, click on the Create new survey button.

And from there you are met with a new screen. There are four options to choose from:

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll be focusing on ‘Use a template’.

If you started with the template library or AI survey creator, you’ll get your survey questions already set for you. You can later edit them to your liking, or add new questions by clicking on “Add new question”. Here you can find a complete list of question and action types.

The CSAT question is typically formulated as “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received?”. But we recommend changing the way you formulate your question to fit your business and the way you communicate with your customers. Below, we’ve selected a few of our favorite ways our customers have formulated their CSAT question to fit their business. Each version simply focuses on slightly different aspects of customer perception, while still holding the core idea of CSAT. We hope these will get you inspired to make your own:

As much as the way you formulate your CSAT question, you can also reconsider the way you ask your CSAT follow-ups. Below you can find a few examples of our favorite ways CSAT follow-up questions were asked:

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 4-5 (satisfied customers): .

Customers in this range indicate high satisfaction, which means they’re generally happy with your product or service. Nevertheless, you should still take this time to follow up. It’s the perfect chance to reinforce their positive experience:

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 3 (neutral customers):

These costumers had an average experience, which is important you follow up to understand how you can improve their experience going forward.

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 1-2 (dissatisfied customers):

Clearly the customers with this score are simply dissatisfied. Make sure to follow-up with them as soon as you can to resolve the issue and prevent potential customer churn.

Going into the Target tab, this will give you a chance to target your website surveys to specific times, a certain group of visitors, and beyond.

It’s important that you target each survey to the visitors who are more likely to contribute meaningfully. Targeting has a lot of benefits, these include:

In the connect tab, you can also integrate your survey with other apps that you use on a daily basis. This is, of course, optional, but we highly recommend that you take advantage of this feature. To learn more about this, jump to this section.

And the most important step to get your survey out there is to launch it. In the Launch tab, if you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to install the Survicate code on your site. You’ve got a couple of options to choose from:

Great, you’re to go now. Start your survey and gather customer insights right from your website or in-product. You can start it right awa or set a custom date to start your survey.

There are various ways you can do this in your surveys. If you are running an email CSAT for instance, you can automatically capture respondents' email addresses using software-aware links.

Once you’ve collected some feedback, you’re ready to analyze it. Here’s a section dedicated to analyzing your data.

In the main dashboard, click on the Create new survey button.

And from there you are met with a new screen. There are four options to choose from:

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll be focusing on ‘Use a template’.

If you started with the template library or AI survey creator, you’ll get your survey questions already set for you. You can later edit them to your liking, or add new questions by clicking on “Add new question”. Here you can find a complete list of question and action types.

The CSAT question is typically formulated as “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the service you received?”. But we recommend changing the way you formulate your question to fit your business and the way you communicate with your customers. Below, we’ve selected a few of our favorite ways our customers have formulated their CSAT question to fit their business. Each version simply focuses on slightly different aspects of customer perception, while still holding the core idea of CSAT. We hope these will get you inspired to make your own:

As much as the way you formulate your CSAT question, you can also reconsider the way you ask your CSAT follow-ups. Below you can find a few examples of our favorite ways CSAT follow-up questions were asked:

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 4-5 (satisfied customers): .

Customers in this range indicate high satisfaction, which means they’re generally happy with your product or service. Nevertheless, you should still take this time to follow up. It’s the perfect chance to reinforce their positive experience:

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 3 (neutral customers):

These costumers had an average experience, which is important you follow up to understand how you can improve their experience going forward.

Follow-up questions to people who give you a score of 1-2 (dissatisfied customers):

Clearly the customers with this score are simply dissatisfied. Make sure to follow-up with them as soon as you can to resolve the issue and prevent potential customer churn.

Going into the Target tab, this will give you a chance to target your website surveys to specific times, a certain group of visitors, and beyond.

It’s important that you target each survey to the visitors who are more likely to contribute meaningfully. Targeting has a lot of benefits, these include:

In the connect tab, you can also integrate your survey with other apps that you use on a daily basis. This is, of course, optional, but we highly recommend that you take advantage of this feature. To learn more about this, jump to this section.

And the most important step to get your survey out there is to launch it. In the Launch tab, if you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to install and configure our SDK. Here are the options you can choose from:

Great, you’re to go now. Start your survey and gather customer insights right from your website or in-product. You can start it right awa or set a custom date to start your survey.

There are various ways you can do this in your surveys. If you are running an email CSAT for instance, you can automatically capture respondents' email addresses using software-aware links.

Once you’ve collected some feedback, you’re ready to analyze it. Here’s a section dedicated to analyzing your data.

Curious how others are using their CSAT surveys? Here’s a collection of amazing customer stories to spark some ideas.

Fortive, a global industrial technology company, uses our platform to enhance the digital experience across its 18 operating companies. By integrating our survey feedback with FullStory’s session data, Fortive has created a seamless, data-driven approach to continuously improve customer satisfaction.

Key Achievements:

By leveraging our simple yet powerful survey tools, Fortive has empowered its teams to make data-driven decisions and enhance the digital experience for their customers. The continuous improvement approach, central to Fortive’s business, is supported by real-time customer insights, ensuring sustained growth and operational excellence.

Here’s the full story

ParkBee, a company that helps ease city congestion by unlocking private parking spaces, leverages Survicate’s CSAT surveys to continuously enhance its customer experience. By gathering real-time feedback from its users, ParkBee has optimized the entire parking journey, resulting in improved satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Key Achievements:

By using our CSAT surveys, ParkBee has empowered its teams to respond quickly to customer needs and improve overall satisfaction, keeping their cities and customer journeys moving seamlessly

Here’s the full story

Medialivre, a leading media company in Portugal, embarked on a digital transformation to become more customer-centric. By bringing on a UX researcher and implementing Survicate surveys, they were able to gain valuable insights and drive meaningful changes across their online platforms.

Key Achievements:

Medialivre’s pivot towards a more customer-centric approach, driven by Patricia Caldas’ UX research efforts and our survey tools, is a testament to the power of listening to users. By gathering real-time feedback, Medialivre is enhancing its online portals and aligning its content with the needs of its audience, setting the stage for continued growth and engagement.

Here’s the full story

Hitta, a leading search engine and directory in Sweden, turned to us to better understand customer sentiment and improve its services. By leveraging CSAT and CSAT surveys, Hitta was able to drive meaningful changes and enhance the overall customer journey.

Key Achievements:

By integrating Survicate into its feedback processes, Hitta has transformed its approach to customer satisfaction. The company's ability to act on real-time feedback has led to tangible improvements in the customer journey, showcasing a commitment to customer-centricity and data-driven decision-making.

Here’s the full story

Can I customize the rating scale for CSAT surveys?

Absolutely. You can customize the rating scale to suit your business needs. Survicate provides options for scales such as 1-5, 1-7, or 1-10. Keep in mind, however, that changing the scale after collecting responses will delete all prior responses.

What should I do if my CSAT score is lower than expected?

Start by analyzing the open-text feedback from your respondents to identify common themes or recurring issues. Use the Insights Hub and Research Assistant features to pinpoint specific pain points. Address these issues directly and communicate the improvements to your customers.

How can I benchmark my CSAT score against industry standards?

Industry standards for CSAT scores vary by sector. Research benchmarks specific to your industry and use our advanced analytics to compare your performance. Alternatively, you can use third-party tools integrated with Survicate to gather comparative data.

What are some common mistakes to avoid when conducting CSAT surveys?

How do I ensure my CSAT survey matches my brand?

Use ourcustomization options to align the survey design with your brand’s colors, fonts, and logos. This creates a seamless experience for your customers and increases engagement. For more information on that, check out this article.

Can I integrate CSAT surveys with my CRM or other tools?

Yes, of course. Survicate integrates with various CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Klaviyo, Braze and more. You can check the full list here.

Help Center articles:

A comprehensive guide to CSAT surveys

Full list of CSAT articles

YouTube Videos:

What is CSAT & How to Measure Customer Satisfaction?

10 powerful Customer Satisfaction questions

Blog posts:

What is CSAT & How to Measure Customer Satisfaction?

Top 8 CSAT Tools that Integrate with HubSpot

Net Promoter, NPS, and the NPS - related emoticons are registered U.S. trademarks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.