Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) Vs Net Promoter Score (NPS) Vs Customer Effort Score (CES)? What Does HappyOrNot Do Better?

So, you want to start measuring your customer satisfaction for your business but not sure which metric you should choose?  The most common metrics used are NPS, CSAT and CES. 

The choice of metric may come down to your time frame for asking for feedback, how often you interact with your customers and what type of service or products you offer. 

Lady taking payment with Smiley Mini in background

What is CSAT?

CSAT measures a customer’s satisfaction with a single purchase or interaction, preferably taken near the time of experience. 

While the question is not prescribed it is usually measured by asking a simple question like ‘How satisfied were you with your experience?  Customers then select from a scale to show their satisfaction, again the scale is not prescribed. 

The timing of CSAT surveys is after an experience, preferably as close as possible to the time so memories are clearer. 

CSAT is calculated by adding all the positive responses and dividing by the total responses and expressed as a % .

The upside of CSAT is that is easy to understand and therefore easy for respondents and generally easy to tie the feedback to a specific experience point. 

Because CSAT can be measured at a point in time it can be asked across multiple touch points in the customer journey, think online booking, instore interaction, delivery and after sales service. 

The benefits of CSAT are that because the feedback its associated with a moment in time and customer experience point it allows you to remedy issues on specific products or services. 

What type of organisations use CSAT?  CSAT’s are usually triggered after completion of a sale, appointment, support offering.

Downsides of CSAT measurement are asking for feedback too often.  If you have customers who transact often, and you are asking for feedback after every transaction you may find the response rate is low or even worse you may lose the customer.  The method you use to collect feedback will be important here as digital solutions may not work as well as physical options for this metric.  See here where we discussed how that next email survey could be your last interaction with your customer. 

What is NPS?

Net Promoter Score also measures customer experience but is focused on a customers’ overall perception of your brand and to long term loyalty. 

NPS is based on asking a specific question “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague?”  It uses a scale of 1-10 where promoters are 9’s and 10’s.  Passives are those who score you 7-8.  Detractors are deemed as unhappy customers who score you 0-6. 

The NPS score is calculated by the % of promoters – % of detractors.  Neutrals are excluded from the calculation. 

Because NPS isn’t generally associated with a specific transaction or experience it can be asked at any time and is often asked as part of an annual or periodic process by an organisation. 

When does NPS make sense?  NPS makes sense when you have a close relationship with a customer, and you are often interacting with them.  In that case it doesn’t make sense to ask them about their satisfaction after every interaction like CSAT does.  Think professional service firms interacting with their customers.   

What about Customer Effort Score (CES)? 

The rationale behind the CES is to increase customer loyalty, not through satisfying your customers, but instead through making it easier for them to do business with you. 

CES probably makes sense for specific industries or for specific interactions with a customer, like support or issue resolution. 

Apart from that, CES operates a lot like CSAT so I won’t spend too much time on it here. 

CSAT, CES or NPS, what does HappyOrNot do better?

Well, the answer is all of them, but we really excel at one. 

Man interacting with Smiley Touch

HappyOrNot can ask respondents any question, whether asking them to rate their experience or would they refer their friends and family.   

HappyOrNot can show results in either NPS or as a customer satisfaction index. 

But HappyOrNot’s virtue is asking people in moment of their experience this generally makes it great for either customer satisfaction measurement or customer effort score.   

HappyOrNot can capture feedback at different points in the customers journey, whether electronically using our digital solution or in person using one of our Smiley Kiosks which fits the CSAT methodology. 

The feedback attributed to an experience point and time of day allows companies to quickly make changes to their service to improve their customer satisfaction score, see here how organisations are doing that with HappyOrNot 

One of the benefits of HappyOrNot is that you can also ask for feedback from those who didn’t purchase from you, who technically aren’t your customers.  Sometimes these feedbacks can provide you with great insights.  NPS focuses on asking customers only. 

One of the downsides of CSAT is over surveying customers.  We’ve all received that survey from that company who we transact with often and add it to our junk folder.  Because HappyOrNot is simpler to interact with customers don’t see it as an inconvenience when providing feedback thus negating one of the perceived issues with CSAT measurement. 

Another of the perceived downsides to CSAT are that people in the neutral and dissatisfied categories don’t fill out surveys, because of the simplicity of HappyOrNot you will capture those people also, not just the extremes. 

So while HappyOrNot can do a great job of measuring NPS of your customers it really shines in measuring CSAT and CES across the different experience points of your customers journey and removes some of the downsides with other methods for measuring these metrics. 

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