Table Of Contents:
- What Is CSAT?
- How Is CSAT Calculated?
- What’s A Good CSAT Score?
- Why CSAT Matters For Customer Service Teams
- How To Improve Your CSAT Score
- How Outsourcing Can Help Improve CSAT
If you want to improve customer experience, you need to know how customers actually feel about your service. That’s where CSAT comes in.
Short for Customer Satisfaction Score, CSAT is a simple way to measure satisfaction immediately after an interaction, usually via a quick survey. Whether you manage a support team in-house or outsource your customer service, CSAT helps you track how well you’re meeting customer expectations and where there’s room to improve.
In this guide, we’ll break down what CSAT means, how it’s calculated, what counts as a good score, and how to use it to improve performance.
What Is CSAT?
CSAT stands for Customer Satisfaction Score, a metric used to measure how satisfied a customer is after a specific interaction or experience.
Most CSAT surveys are sent directly after a service touchpoint, such as:
A call with a customer service agent
A live chat session
A product return or delivery
A tech support ticket resolution
The survey usually asks a simple question like:
“How satisfied were you with your experience today?”
The customer then rates their satisfaction using a scale, typically from 1 to 5, where 1 = very dissatisfied and 5 = very satisfied.
How Is CSAT Calculated?
CSAT is calculated as a percentage of satisfied customers. Typically, only the top responses, such as 4 and 5 on a 5-point scale, are counted as “satisfied.”
CSAT formula:
CSAT (%) = (Number of satisfied responses ÷ Total responses) × 100
Example:
If 80 out of 100 customers rate their experience as 4 or 5, your CSAT score would be:
(80 ÷ 100) × 100 = 80%
Different businesses may use different survey scales (1–3, 1–5, 1–10), but the logic stays the same, focusing on the percentage of satisfied customers.
What’s A Good CSAT Score?
Most businesses aim for a CSAT score of 75–85%.
However, what’s considered “good” depends on your industry, product, and service expectations. The key is to:
Track your own trends over time
Benchmark against similar companies
Use CSAT alongside other metrics like NPS (Net Promoter Score) or First Contact Resolution
A single bad experience won’t ruin your score, but a pattern of dissatisfaction might. That’s why it’s important to act on CSAT feedback quickly.
Why CSAT Matters For Customer Service Teams
CSAT gives you instant, measurable insight into how customers feel and why they might come back (or not).
It helps your business:
Track service quality across agents and channels
Spot pain points in the customer journey
Set internal KPIs for customer service teams
Improve customer loyalty by listening and responding to feedback
It’s especially useful for outsourced teams where performance needs to be clearly monitored, reported, and improved continuously.
Looking for support with service quality? Learn more about our inbound customer service and tech support outsourcing services.
How To Improve Your CSAT Score
Improving CSAT isn’t about chasing perfection, it’s about creating consistently positive experiences.
Here are a few proven ways to raise your score:
Reduce wait times
Customers are less likely to feel satisfied if they’re kept waiting. Use call routing, live chat, or self-service options to speed up response times.
Train your team in empathy and resolution
The quality of the interaction matters more than the script. Invest in training that helps agents listen, respond, and resolve with care.
Use omnichannel support
Customers want to reach you their way. Whether it’s phone, email, live chat, or social media. A good omnichannel support system helps you meet them where they are.
Send surveys at the right moment
Timing matters. Send CSAT surveys immediately after the interaction for accurate, relevant responses.
Act on what you learn
Review negative feedback regularly, and make improvements that actually close the loop.
How Outsourcing Can Help Improve CSAT
High CSAT scores come from well-trained teams, responsive service, and consistent quality; all of which are easier to scale when you outsource to a partner who lives and breathes customer experience.
At Consumer Links, we help brands across the UK and beyond:
Deliver faster support with round-the-clock coverage
Provide high-quality service with trained agents
Scale quickly with flexible outsourcing models
Improve CSAT through real-time monitoring and reporting
We integrate with your existing systems or run our own — whatever works best for your team and your customers.
Ready To Improve Your CSAT Score? Let’s Talk
We help businesses across various industries, including E-commerce, deliver the kind of customer service that keeps satisfaction scores high and complaints low.
Whether you need extra support during peak periods or a full scale outsourcing company, we’re here to help. Our UK-managed teams in Manchester and Durban are trained to represent your brand, protect your reputation, and deliver results from day one.
Learn how we can help you improve your CSAT score and scale your customer support with confidence and get in touch today.
