Market Research: Foundations to Practice · Measuring Customer Sentiment
Customer Satisfaction and Customer Effort Scores
NPS is not the only single-question customer metric in wide use, and the other two answer genuinely different questions. This chapter covers CSAT and CES and when each fits better than NPS.
CSAT typically asks a direct satisfaction question, such as 'how satisfied were you with this interaction,' usually on a short scale, and is best suited to measuring satisfaction with a specific, recent, discrete interaction, such as a single customer support ticket, rather than an overall, holistic relationship with the brand, which is the different kind of question NPS is more commonly used to address.
Key Takeaways
- CSAT measures satisfaction with a specific, recent, discrete interaction, unlike NPS's focus on overall brand relationship and advocacy.
- CES measures the effort required to accomplish a specific goal, based on research suggesting low effort predicts loyalty better than delighting customers does.
- These three metrics measure genuinely different things; selecting the right one requires clarity about which specific thing is being measured.
- Mature customer experience programs often use multiple metrics together at different journey points, rather than relying on one metric alone.