What Is CSAT? Purpose, Benefits, and How to Measure It

‍Horst Schulze, legendary hotelier and co-founder of the modern-day Ritz-Carlton, famously said: “Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve.” That philosophy wasn’t just lip service at Ritz-Carlton — it came with a price tag. Every employee, regardless of role, was empowered to spend up to $2,000 to resolve any guest issue — no manager approval needed.

Why go to such lengths? Because Schulze recognised that customer satisfaction isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s the foundation of a thriving business. Without it, growth stalls. With it, as Schulze and his team proved, you can build something iconic.

In this post, we’ll explore the key metric that captures customer satisfaction: the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). We’ll break down what it is, why it matters, and how you can improve your scores — without handing out $2,000 per interaction (unless you want to!).

Main Takeaways

• CSAT scores measure how satisfied customers are with a specific product, service, or touchpoint in their customer journey.
• Tracking and analysing CSAT helps businesses enhance the overall customer experience (CX), optimise performance, and fuel growth. 
• Strategies to boost CSAT include removing customer friction, personalising interactions, and training agents to prioritise responsiveness and first-call resolution.
• CSAT captures a single moment and often yields low response rates, so it’s essential to pair it with broader customer interaction data.
• AI-powered tools now make it easier to uncover insights from “offline” conversations like phone calls, giving a fuller picture of customer satisfaction.

What Is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)?

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a metric that helps businesses understand how satisfied customers are with a specific product, service, or touchpoint on the customer journey. You calculate CSAT using the results of a simple question asking customers to rate their satisfaction with a product or service on a scale. For example: “How satisfied were you with [X]?”

Respondents rate their experience on a scale — most commonly from 1 to 5, 1 to 7, or 1 to 10 — where 1 means “very dissatisfied” and the highest number indicates “very satisfied.”

To calculate CSAT, businesses divide the total score of all responses by the number of respondents and multiply by 100 to get a percentage. For example, if you handled 100 service calls and received a combined satisfaction score of 880, your CSAT would be 88%.

CSAT vs. NPS vs. CES

CSAT is one of several key metrics you can use to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. It focuses on short-term satisfaction with a specific product, service, or interaction. For example, if a customer calls an auto dealership with a question about a new car delivery, they might receive a quick post-call survey asking how satisfied they were with the experience.

You can measure customers’ long-term satisfaction with a Net Promoter Score (NPS). Customers are asked how likely they are to recommend the company to a friend or relative, capturing broader sentiment over time.

Another common metric often used alongside CSAT and NPS is Customer Effort Score (CES). CES is a measure of how easy it is for customers to interact with your brand. 

The Benefits of Tracking CSAT

Why track these metrics anyway? Well, metrics like CSAT aren’t just points on a scale. They can lead to significant performance benefits for businesses in their customer relationships.

Benefit 1: Improves Customer Experience

CSAT surveys capture a snapshot of customer sentiment immediately after an interaction, while the experience is still fresh. If a customer rates their experience poorly (say, under 50%), it gives your team the chance to act fast. Whether that means retraining agents or refining service policies, CSAT feedback helps you pinpoint exactly where improvements are needed.

Benefit 2: Drives Business Growth and Retention

Higher CSAT scores often correlate with stronger customer loyalty and more revenue. Satisfied customers tend to buy more, stay longer, and recommend your business to others. Not sure? Cross-reference your CSAT results with metrics like NPS or Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to see how satisfaction translates into long-term gains.

Benefit 3: Helps Optimise Agent Performance

CSAT scores are highly flexible and packed with actionable insights. You can use them to measure satisfaction with specific interaction types — such as service requests, product inquiries, or billing issues — or drill down to individual agent performance.

That level of granularity is powerful. High-performing agents on the customer service team can be recognised, celebrated, and tapped to coach others. Meanwhile, agents with lower scores can receive targeted support, like refresher training or mentoring, to strengthen their skills and improve outcomes on future calls.

Benefit 4: Supports Data-Driven Decision-Making

CSAT scores represent a valuable data source that can be used throughout the business to support strategic decision-making. When customer satisfaction begins to decline, CSAT data provides a concrete, quantifiable signal that something needs to change. This evidence can help customer-facing teams build a compelling case for leadership to invest in improving the customer experience.

Used on their own or alongside complementary metrics like NPS, CSAT scores can also support broader initiatives — whether that means adjusting service delivery, refining policies, or expanding training programs. When shared across departments, they help align priorities and drive customer-centric decision-making throughout the organisation.

How to Improve Your Customer Satisfaction Metrics

Customer expectations are always evolving — so your approach to satisfaction must, too. To keep up, businesses need to stay laser-focused on both the customer experience and the metrics that reflect it. Here are five practical ways to boost your CSAT scores and strengthen overall customer satisfaction.

Step 1: Reduce Customer Effort in Interactions

CES and CSAT go hand in hand. When you reduce friction, satisfaction rises. So, how can you make interactions easier?

How about making chatbots and virtual assistants available on your website so customers can get answers to frequently asked questions 24/7, without the need to call customer service? And, if they do want to call, minimise customer effort by using an interactive voice response (IVR) system. These solutions can identify the customer’s intent and route them quickly to the right department or a live agent — no endless menu maze required.

Step 2: Personalise Customer Interactions

Today’s customers don’t just appreciate personalised service — they expect it. And when you can meet their expectations by delivering tailored experiences, CSAT tends to rise.

Start by using your digital data to build a strong profile of your audience. Then, enrich that view with first-party data, third-party insights, and voice of the customer (VoC) analytics to uncover emotional cues and customer intent — especially from phone conversations.

AI-powered tools like Invoca’s PreSense can help your business take personalisation even further. By analysing pre-call digital activity, PreSense delivers real-time insights to your service agents — like the caller’s name, location, and intent — before they even pick up the phone. That means agents can skip the small talk and get right to solving the customer’s issue, creating a smoother, more satisfying interaction from the first “hello.”

See how PreSense works in this short video:

Step 3: Improve First Call Resolution (FCR)

First Call Resolution (FCR) rate is one of the most direct paths to improving CSAT. If you want to increase customer satisfaction, solve their problem the first time they reach out — whether it’s by email, chat, or phone.

To improve your FCR rate, start by ensuring your FAQ section is up to date. This helps customers resolve simple issues themselves, reducing the need to contact support at all. Then, use conversational IVR or intelligent call routing to minimise transfers and send calls to the right agent.

Finally, if you’re using conversation intelligence tools to analyse call transcripts, make sure you’re capturing insights into recurring issues. For example, if multiple callers mention a broken link, AI can flag that trend automatically — so you can address the problem proactively, before it frustrates more customers.

Step 4: Implement Customer Feedback

Listening to your customers is only half the battle. To truly improve satisfaction, you need to act on feedback and ensure customers know you’re doing it.

Don’t wait for survey results or formal complaints. With AI-powered tools like Invoca, you can analyse calls at scale to detect patterns in customer sentiment, spot emerging issues, and uncover actionable insights. This allows you to respond promptly, make smarter decisions, and show customers that their voice truly drives change.

Step 5: Provide Agent Training and Support

AI tools that analyse offline interactions like phone calls offer major advantages for businesses aiming to improve CSAT. For example, Invoca’s AI-powered quality assurance (QA) can automatically evaluate agent performance consistently, objectively, and at scale.

Your business can use these insights to build targeted coaching modules for agents based on real-world scenarios. Managers can use the modules to run formal training sessions using these modules, or agents can complete the modules independently, at their own pace. Because the AI continuously monitors and scores calls, it supports ongoing training and development — without requiring constant oversight from managers.

The result? A more confident, better-equipped support team — and more satisfied customers.

How AI and Sentiment Analysis Enhance CSAT Tracking

Another way to use AI to boost customer satisfaction and CSAT is through sentiment analysis. You can use this technology to extract emotional tone and keyword patterns from call transcripts and recordings, helping you understand what customers are really feeling, even if they never fill out a survey.

AI-powered sentiment analysis adds value to CSAT tracking by:

• Analysing 100% of the quality and content of customer interactions in a fraction of the time it would take a human researcher. 
• Detecting emotional cues in real time, including frustration or confusion, that live agents may miss during a call.
• Supporting more targeted coaching, allowing managers to refine training based on shifts in overall customer sentiment.

While CSAT scores offer a useful snapshot, sentiment analysis fills in the emotional context, giving you a deeper, more nuanced picture of the customer experience.

Improve Your CSAT Scores with Invoca’s AI-Powered Conversation Analytics

If you want to improve customer satisfaction, then you need to track CSAT. High CSAT scores are linked to better customer experiences, stronger retention, and increased revenue. That said, CSAT surveys aren’t a perfect metric. They rely on customer participation — and not everyone responds. To get a more complete picture, you need to look beyond CSAT alone. 

Your business no doubt already collects a mountain of customer data from both online and offline interactions. But finding the time and tools to turn that data into meaningful insight is a challenge. That’s where AI and automation come in. Solutions like Invoca can analyse data at scale — including from offline interactions like phone calls — to uncover richer, more actionable insights into customer sentiment and satisfaction.

Even more powerful? These insights don’t just reveal issues — they give your business the opportunity to fix them before they can lead to customer churn. By combining CSAT tracking with AI-driven intelligence, your company can shift from reactive service to proactive, personalised customer experience management. This will set your business apart from the competition and help you build lasting customer loyalty. 

Additional Reading

To learn more about how Invoca’s AI-driven quality intelligence tools can help you measure customer satisfaction — and improve it — see these additional resources:

• Build Your Action Plan for Improved Customer Satisfaction
• AI Marketing Analytics: Benefits, Use Cases, and Top Tools
• How to Personalise Customer Experiences With Data Analytics
• Customer Experience Optimisation: What You Need to Know 

When you’re ready, you can book a free demo with our team to learn how Invoca can help your business elevate its customer satisfaction scores — and much more.

FAQs

What Is a Good Customer Satisfaction Score?

Benchmarks for Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores can vary by industry, customer base, and interaction type. Since CSAT is expressed as a percentage of total responses, any score above 50% is technically positive, meaning the majority of respondents are satisfied.

That said, most businesses aim to earn higher scores. As a general rule of thumb:

• Above 70% is considered good
• Above 80% is excellent
• Above 90% is world-class (and often difficult to sustain)

To get the most value from CSAT, consider tracking your own internal benchmarks over time and comparing them with industry-specific averages whenever available.

How Can Businesses Calculate Customer Satisfaction?

Businesses can use several key metrics to measure customer satisfaction, including CSAT. A CSAT score is calculated using the results from a survey, which a customer typically completes after a specific interaction, like a customer service call or product delivery. Customers are asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale (usually from 1 to 5, 1 to 7, or 1 to 10).

To calculate the CSAT score, businesses need to:

• Add up the number of positive responses (e.g., ratings of 4 and 5 on a 5-point scale).
• Divide that by the total number of responses.
• Multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage.

The formula looks like this: 

CSAT = (Number of satisfied responses ÷ total responses) × 100.

So, for example, if 80 out of 100 customers report they are satisfied or very satisfied with their experience, the CSAT score would be 80%.

How Else Can Companies Measure Customer Satisfaction?

Since CSAT measures a single interaction, businesses can introduce other metrics and key performance indicators, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and Customer Effort Score (CES), to gauge overall customer satisfaction.

Where Does AI Fit into CSAT?

AI plays a powerful role in helping businesses measure and improve customer satisfaction, especially as CSAT surveys often suffer from low response rates.

With tools like conversation intelligence and sentiment analysis, AI can automatically analyse large volumes of customer interactions, including phone calls, to uncover insights that would be difficult or impossible to detect manually. AI’s deep learning capabilities allow businesses to sift through vast datasets quickly to identify patterns in emotional tone, language, and behavior.

This adds valuable context to traditional CSAT metrics. While a survey may capture a single score, AI reveals the “why” behind customer sentiment, offering a more granular and complete view of the overall CX. It helps companies not only track satisfaction but also understand and act on it in real time.