How CSAT is calculated
Customer Satisfaction Score is the percentage of respondents who say they're satisfied with a specific interaction:
CSAT = satisfied responses ÷ total responses × 100
Customers answer one question — "How satisfied were you with your experience?" — on a 1-5 scale, from "very unsatisfied" to "very satisfied". Only the top two boxes count as satisfied: a 4 (satisfied) or a 5 (very satisfied). Ratings of 1-3 count against you, even the neutral middle.
This "top-2-box" method is stricter than averaging the ratings, and that's the point. An average of 3.8 can hide a lot of unhappy customers behind a few enthusiastic ones, while top-2-box asks a blunter question: what share of customers actually walked away satisfied? Say 100 customers answered your post-support survey and 85 rated it 4 or 5 — your CSAT is 85%.
What is a good CSAT score?
Most industries land between 75% and 85%, so a score in that range means you're doing fine. Above 90% is excellent, and below 70% usually signals a broken touchpoint worth investigating.
Benchmarks vary widely by industry, though. Simple, transactional experiences — a support chat, a food delivery — tend to score high, while complex or grudging purchases like insurance and telecom score lower. Channel matters too: phone support often scores differently than email or chat for the same team. The most useful comparison is your own score, tracked over time for the same touchpoint. If you have a small number of responses, check our sample size calculator before reading too much into a single week's number.
CSAT vs NPS vs CES
CSAT is one of three standard customer experience metrics, and they answer different questions:
| Metric | Question | Measures | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| CSAT | "How satisfied were you?" (1-5) | Satisfaction with a specific interaction | Support tickets, purchases, onboarding steps |
| NPS | "How likely are you to recommend us?" (0-10) | Overall loyalty to your brand | Quarterly relationship check-ins |
| CES | "How easy was it to get your issue resolved?" (1-7) | Effort required from the customer | Support and self-service flows |
They complement rather than replace each other. CSAT tells you which touchpoints work, NPS tells you whether the overall relationship is healthy, and CES predicts churn in support-heavy products. Many teams run CSAT continuously after key interactions and NPS quarterly.
When to send CSAT surveys
CSAT is a transactional metric, so send it right after the transaction:
- After a purchase: catch the customer while the buying experience is still fresh — checkout friction is forgotten within days.
- After a support interaction: trigger the survey when the ticket closes, not in a monthly digest.
- After onboarding: ask once a customer completes setup or their first key milestone, when they can judge whether the experience delivered.
The pattern is the same in every case: tie the survey to a specific, recent event. A generic "how satisfied are you with us?" sent quarterly measures a fuzzy average of everything — that's what NPS is for.
Tips for reliable CSAT results
- Ask immediately after the interaction. Memory fades fast, and late surveys skew toward customers with strong feelings in either direction.
- Keep it to one question plus an optional comment. The rating gives you the score; the open comment tells you what to fix. Every extra question costs you response rate.
- Track by segment and channel over time. A single company-wide CSAT hides more than it reveals. Break it down by touchpoint, channel, product line, or support agent, and watch the trend for each.
- Survey everyone, not just happy customers. Triggering surveys only after resolved tickets or completed purchases inflates the score and hides the failures.
- Close the loop with unsatisfied customers. A quick follow-up on a 1 or 2 rating can recover the customer — and it always recovers information.
Measure satisfaction with a survey people actually answer
A good CSAT survey is a 1-5 rating question, an optional comment box, and nothing else. Fomr lets you build exactly that in minutes — see our guides on building a customer feedback form and creating a satisfaction survey. Share it by link or embed it after checkout and support interactions, collect unlimited responses free, then bring your satisfied and total counts back here. And if you're not sure how to phrase the question, try our survey question generator.