Updated: June 12, 2023
Customer service surveys are confusing. There's an alphabet soup of options available to companies who want to survey their customers.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Customer Effort Score (CES)
They all have their proponents and detractors. It's tough to figure out what to do.
Here’s an overview of each survey type along with a real case study where it’s effective. You’ll also see a short video overview of the three major survey types.
Do this before you select a survey type
There is one step you must complete before you decide what type of survey to use. Decide why you want to gather feedback from your customers and what you plan to do with it.
Here are four examples of organizations with different survey goals.
Software company: improve customer interactions with technical support.
Nonprofit organization: increase loyalty from annual donors.
Equipment manufacturer: reduce friction for employees needing help from IT.
Financial services: identify top problems faced by 30 biggest clients.
Each of these organizations have very different needs. Keep reading to learn what type of survey I recommended for each one.
What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey?
A customer satisfaction, or CSAT, survey asks customers to rate their level of satisfaction with a product, service, or experience.
This is a versatile survey that can be used in many situations. You can use this survey to identify problems that frustrate customers and pinpoint factors that make your customers happy. If you aren’t sure what type of survey to use, go with a CSAT survey.
One downside is the CSAT survey has weakest connection to customer behaviors like loyalty. Other survey types can be more effective if you want to focus on something specific like revenue growth.
Recommendation: I suggested the software company use a CSAT survey to improve interactions with technical support. A CSAT rating combined with a comment field would allow the technical support team to quickly identify trends that made customers happy or frustrated.
What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey?
A Net Promoter Score, or NPS, survey focuses on a customer's likelihood to recommend your product, service, or company to others.
NPS surveys ask customers to rate how likely they are to recommend a company using a scale of one to 10. Here’s an example Suunto sent me after I registered a new hiking watch on their website.
The responses are then divided into three groups, based on their rating:
Promoters: 9-10
Passives: 7-8
Detractors: 0-6
The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the detractors from the promoters.
Imagine 100 people take the survey, and there are 60 promoters, 30 passives, and 10 detractors. The Net Promoter Score for the survey would be 50:
60 promoters - 10 detractors = 50
The score takes into account the people who really like you and the people who don't. The people in the middle, the passives, aren't counted in the overall score, although their feedback is still important.
NPS is a useful survey type if your primary goal is revenue growth. It helps you pinpoint what factors make customers so happy with your business that they’re willing to recommend you to others.
One con is the NPS has a very narrow focus. It's not really useful unless your goal is to gain more referrals.
Recommendation: I suggested the nonprofit use NPS to survey donors once per year. Most donors made an annual contribution, so the survey could be timed about six months after the anniversary date of their donation. The results could provide a number of useful insights:
Identify dissatisfied donors so the relationship could be saved.
Determine what groups of donors were more likely to refer others to donate as well.
Discover trends to help increase the overall number and value of donations.
What is a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey?
A Customer Effort Score (CES) survey looks at how easy it is to resolve a customer service issue.
Customers are typically asked how easy it was to resolve their issue. The question has a seven-point rating scale that ranges from 1 (not very easy) to 7 (very easy).
Research has shown that the results can be a strong indicator of customer loyalty.
A CES survey can also help you find ways to serve your customers more efficiently. High effort is often associated with repeat contacts, chronic problems, and inefficient processes.
Like CSAT and NPS surveys, customer effort score surveys have a few pros and cons.
Pros include helping you fix problems, and identify wasteful procedures. Making things easier for your customers is also shown to drive increased loyalty.
Some cons are that the CES is transactional, so it might not work if your goal is to conduct a relationship survey. It also has a narrow focus, so this may not be the best survey for examining broader issues.
Recommendation: I suggested the manufacturer’s IT Director use a CES survey to evaluate IT interactions. He had been using an NPS survey, but this wasn’t the most appropriate tool since his customers were internal employees. His ultimate goal was reducing friction, which is exactly what a CES survey targets.
When should you avoid using a survey?
You should not survey your customers if there are more effective ways to get feedback.
Recommendation: I recommended the financial services company eliminate its customer service (CSAT) survey. The company had approximately 3,000 customers, but the bulk of its revenue came from 30 key clients.
The operations manager told me these clients were the ones he really want to get feedback from. In particular, he wanted to understand the top problems faced by these 30 clients so they could improve their service.
The manager could easily call all 30 clients to get their feedback directly. These conversations would reveal detailed information and feedback that a survey might not capture. And, they’d have the added benefit of helping the manager build a stronger personal relationship with each one.
Asking customers directly is one of several ways you can can capture customer feedback without using a survey.
Take Action
It’s important to choose the right survey for your specific goal. Start by deciding why you want to gather feedback from your customers and what you plan to do with that data.
You can find more ideas on my new customer service survey resource page.
This short video explains provides more details about each survey type.