What is CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), and how is it calculated?
The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures how satisfied someone was with a product, service, or specific interaction, based on a single direct question: "How satisfied are you with...?". It's the simplest and most intuitive of the three big customer experience metrics (alongside NPS and CES), which is also why it's the most common one in short post-purchase or post-support surveys.
The question and the scale
The most common scale is 5 points (Very unsatisfied to Very satisfied), though 3 or 7 points are also used depending on how much granularity is needed. Unlike NPS, there's no single standard 0-to-10 scale — CSAT adapts to whatever length best balances speed of answering with detail.
The formula
There are two common ways to calculate it. The first is the simple average of all numeric responses. The second, more common in reports, is the percentage of "satisfied" responses: people who picked one of the two highest options on the scale, divided by the total number of responses, times 100. With 80 satisfied responses out of 100 total, the CSAT is 80%.
How to set up a CSAT question in SurvIQ
Just like with CES, there's no special question type needed: it's a "Rating" question with the scale length you choose (5 points is the most common starting point) and text focused on overall satisfaction instead of a specific effort.
What the result looks like
In results, SurvIQ shows the average of all responses along with the full distribution per scale point. The "satisfied" percentage (top-box) is easy to calculate by adding up the count of the two highest options in that distribution.
CSAT vs NPS vs CES, one sentence each
CSAT measures overall satisfaction with a single interaction, NPS measures long-term loyalty toward the whole brand, and CES measures the effort it took to resolve something specific. All three can coexist in the same measurement strategy, each answering a different question depending on the moment in the customer journey.
When to use it
CSAT works best right after a purchase, a delivery, or the close of a support ticket — any moment where it makes sense to ask "how satisfied were you with what just happened?". Sent recurrently after every similar interaction, it lets you compare satisfaction trends over time by interaction type.