Deciding whether to track NPS or CSAT depends on your goals and needs when it comes to measuring customer satisfaction.
If you want your business to grow and retain client relationships, then it’s important to track customer satisfaction. But there are many ways to do this.
Based on a recent conversation with a few members during an Emerging Technologies Committee meeting, we were inspired to talk about the difference between two popular metrics that the industry uses to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty: CSAT (customer satisfaction score) and NPS (net promoter score).
What Is CSAT?
CSAT is used to measure a customer’s satisfaction level with a specific interaction or service call.
To evaluate CSAT, a customer is typically asked to rate their satisfaction by using a scale (from 1-5 or 1-10, for example) to answer a question like: “How satisfied were you with our recent work on XYZ?” This provides you with a real-time snapshot of how happy that client is at that specific point in time with your work on a specific project or task.
What Is NPS?
NPS is used to measure customer loyalty and the likelihood that a customer will recommend your company.
To evaluate NPS, a customer is typically asked to rate the likelihood of recommending your company on a scale (from 1-10, for example). They may be asked to respond to a question like: “How likely are you to recommend our company to a colleague or coworker?”
From there, customers are split up into groups based on how they respond. For instance, they’re often grouped like this:
- 9-10: Promoters who are passionate about your company and are highly likely to promote and recommend it to others.
- 7-8: Passives who are satisfied with your work but not passionate enough to actively promote your business.
- 0-6: Detractors who are not satisfied with their experience and may not speak positive about your company.
Your overall NPS is determined by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.
As opposed to CSAT, which measures satisfaction at a specific point in time, NPS offers a broader view of loyalty, brand reputation, and long-term satisfaction.
Which Customer Satisfaction Metric Should You Track?
Deciding whether to track NPS or CSAT depends on your goals and needs.
You should consider tracking NPS if you want to:
- Measure loyalty and the likelihood of clients praising your services and recommending them to others
- Gain broad insights into how customers perceive your brand
- Identify your company’s biggest advocates and detractors so you can respond accordingly
- Gather data to shape sales and marketing strategies based on loyalty
- Compare your performance to industry standards or competitors
You should consider tracking CSAT if you want to:
- Get feedback specific to interactions, projects, or services
- Make quick, actionable improvements on specific issues
- Measure progress in a certain area of your business: response time, problem resolution, etc.
- Address daily performance and service quality
- Determine where touchpoints within the customer journey can be improved
Or you can do what member PTG does: measure both.
“We liken the CSAT to be more of a ‘selfie photo’ of how we’re doing on a particular transaction,” explains Bill Fons, president at PTG. “It answers the question: ‘Did we make the customer happy today?’ ”
For NPS, the company goes a bit deeper and asks broader questions surrounding the likelihood of recommendation and how strongly the customer feels that PTG is an adequate service provider.
“To me, NPS should answer the question about how loyal the client is to our company as a whole,” he explains.
Start Your Own Surveys
If you want to do better with tracking customer satisfaction, NSCA’s Essentials Online Library has survey templates you can use to get started.
