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NPS vs CSAT: Which is better?

When it comes to improving your business, understanding your customers should be your first step. That’s why brands around the world have adopted metrics like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) to track and measure customer satisfaction. NPS has been around for over 20 years, but recently, many brands have made the switch to CSAT. In this article, we’ll explore what each of these metrics does, how to get the best results, and when to use them. 

So which customer feedback metric should you be using – NPS or CSAT? 

What is a Net Promoter Score (NPS)?

Net Promoter Scores are used to assess how positive customers are after interacting with a brand. Essentially, it asks how likely a customer is to promote the brand to others through personal recommendation. 

Calculating your Net Promoter Score

To determine your brand’s NPS, you need to collect a ranked score from all customers on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being highly likely to recommend the brand to someone else. 

According to their responses, customers fall into three categories:

  • Promoters (9-10)
  • Passives (7-8)
  • Detractors (0-6)

If your business is meeting the majority of customer expectations, you should have more promoters than detractors. Once you have all the customer scores, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. This will give you a percentage – your NPS. 

Word-of-mouth marketing

Word-of-mouth promotion is fundamental to businesses, with 64% of marketing executives stating it as the most effective form of marketing. To take advantage of this, NPS surveys are designed to measure how many referrals a brand is expected to get from its existing customers. 

Linking to online reviews

It is worth noting that while it does give an overview, these NPS scores don’t have any direct correlation to the number of real-life referrals. Even if a customer gives a high score, there is no accountability for them to tell others about the brand. In this sense, the NPS score is more of a vague representation, with no actual real-world relevance. 

Tips for using the NPS metric

Net Promoter Scores are best suited to moments when customers have a brief moment to pause. Unfortunately, NPS surveys don’t have the best response rates, so you need to target customers when they have the time to spare. 

To get the best results with your NPS survey, follow these tips: 

  • Avoid sending them to disgruntled customers. 
  • Keep the survey short and sweet.   
  • Include a review request link in the survey. 
  • Thank them for their time. 
  • If they do leave a review, respond to it publicly and positively. 

Common scenarios include after a purchase or customer service interaction. If you decide to implement an NPS survey, we recommend pairing it with a review request link. This way, instead of asking for a meaningless score, the customer can easily follow it up with a public review for other prospective customers to see. 

What is a Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT)? 

Every brand wants to keep its customers happy, which is why measuring Customer Satisfaction is so important. If you want to cultivate brand loyalty and improve your processes to achieve it, you need to have the most accurate data available and that comes from the people who experience it for themselves. 

Essentially, CSAT surveys ask customers to rank how satisfied they are on a consistent numerical scale of either 1-5 or 1-10. This can refer to the overall experience or specific elements, such as customer service or product quality. 

Calculating your Customer Satisfaction score

To measure Customer Satisfaction, all you need to do is ask customers to measure their satisfaction on a scale. Typically, the answers will be ranked like this:

  1. Very unsatisfied
  2. Unsatisfied
  3. Neutral
  4. Satisfied
  5. Very satisfied

Once you have multiple customer scores, add them together and divide them by the total number of responses for a percentage rate. 

Targeted and actionable

The results of CSAT surveys are much more specific and insightful than the vague indication of an NPS. When it comes to making real changes to your operations, this is a huge advantage. Before allocating resources or adjusting your processes, CSAT scores allow you to make sure the proposed improvements are aligned with customer needs. 

CSAT is widely used because it gives a more depth analysis of any and every part of the Customer Experience. It’s all about collecting authentic and actionable customer data directly from the people who know your brand best. 

When to use the CSAT metric

Customer Satisfaction surveys can be used across any aspect of the Customer Experience to get in touch with customer preferences and find out what needs to be addressed right away. A few opportunities include:  

  • Immediately after a purchase. 
  • After they’ve subscribed to a newsletter or regular email. 
  • A few days or weeks after a product purchase. 
  • When a customer service representative has helped them with a problem. 

To get the best results with your CSAT survey, keep them short and simple, include a review request link, and thank them for their input. Remember that giving feedback is not a requirement, so you need to ensure they feel recognised for taking the time to complete it. 

Customer feedback tools

When it comes to collecting, tracking, and understanding customer feedback, you need to be equipped with the best tools on the market. 

At Review Tui, we make it easy for you to gather customer feedback using the best methods in the industry. Our intuitive software provides: 

  • Tailor-made surveys.
  • Real-time reporting and alerts. 
  • Customer journey mapping with campaign links. 
  • Data analytics. 
  • HubSpot integration. 
  • Several quantifiable metrics, including CSAT. 

Altogether, these features will help you get to the core of the Customer Experience and take it to the next level. To keep your customers coming back for more and ensure they’re telling everyone they know about you, sign up for the Review Tui waitlist

Or, to get started today, download our Guide to implementing a customer feedback strategy. From surveys and analytics to integrating your CRM, you’ll find everything you need to make the most of your customer feedback. 

Download our free customer feedback strategy guide