What is CSAT?

CSAT is a key performance indicator (KPI) that quantifies how satisfied customers are with doing business with you. It’s typically measured by asking customers to rate their satisfaction with a specific interaction, product, or overall experience on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 = “very dissatisfied” and 5 = “very satisfied.” CSAT surveys can give you valuable insight into short-term customer satisfaction and pinpoint areas for improvement. Most importantly, CSAT surveys provide an opportunity for your customers to voice their opinions and give direct feedback, which helps you build better customer relationships.

How to calculate your CSAT score

The CSAT score is based on the number of responses who rated their experience 4 or 5. To calculate your CSAT score, use the following formula:

CSAT Score = (Number of positive responses (4 or 5) / Total number of responses) x 100

For example, if you received 120 positive responses out of 200 total responses, the calculation would be as follows:

CSAT Score = (120 / 200) x 100 = 60%

In this case the CSAT score would be 60%, indicating that 60% of respondents had a positive experience. However, keep in mind that CSAT scores are generally quite high (80%+), and the score itself might not mean that much except that your users didn’t have a bad experience.

Instead of blindly focusing on the score, you want to look out for anomalies. For example, out of 120 positive responses, how many of these were neutral? Also, a sudden spike in neutral or low satisfaction results can indicate that something has happened on your website, or signal an issue that needs to be addressed.

CSAT Benchmarks

Benchmarking CSAT provides insights into how well you are performing compared to industry standards. Here are general benchmarks:

• Bad: Below 50%
• Average: 60-75%
• Good: 75-85%
• Excellent: Above 85%

CSAT vs NPS – When to use which survey type?

CSAT surveys are best for measuring short-term satisfaction, transactional interactions, and pinpointing specific areas of improvement throughout the customer journey.

NPS surveys are best for measuring long-term loyalty and benchmarking yourself against industry peers and competitors.

So, how do you decide which survey type to use? Well, it depends on what timeframe you are measuring and what you want to measure.

Use a CSAT survey if you want to find out:

• What do your customers think about your overall shopping experience…
• If your loyalty members are satisfied with their membership…
• How your support reps are performing…
• How satisfied your customers are with their last purchase…
• If your customers can find all the information they need on the product page…

When to use a CSAT survey

1. Before and after a website redesign

Before you launch your new design, run a CSAT survey to all new customers on the thank-you page. This will act as your baseline result.

When you have launched your new design, run a CSAT survey for all new customers on the thank-you page again. This will help you gauge whether your new design was a success right off the bat, or if it needs some improvement.

2. After a purchase

This is one of the best times to get feedback from your customers. Why? Because they just bought something from you. Which means they’re super engaged with your brand. And they can tell you exactly how they feel about your product, delivery, and support. So make sure to show a CSAT survey right after they make a purchase.

3. After customer support interactions

According to a study by Zendesk, 66% of customers say that customer service is the most important factor in their loyalty. That’s why you want to ask for feedback every time a customer interacts with your support team. This way, you can measure how well your support reps are doing. And how happy your customers are with the help they received.

4. After product/service usage

If you sell a product or service that requires ongoing usage or subscription, you need to keep tabs on how your customers are using it. And how satisfied they are with the overall experience. The best way to do that? Send them periodic surveys through email or in-app. This will help you understand what they like and dislike about your product or service. And how you can improve it to make them happier.

5. After onsite interactions

Another smart way to use CSAT surveys is to trigger them based on specific events or milestones in the customer journey. Let’s say a customer attends a training session, completes a project, or reaches a significant milestone in using your product. These are all great opportunities to ask for feedback. Because they can tell you how satisfied your customers are with the value they’re getting from your product or service.

6. At or around abandonment and drop-off points

Sometimes customers leave and you have no idea why. You can hypothesize, but if you want to know for sure you need to ASK. They might abandon their shopping cart, cancel their subscription, or stop using your product or service altogether. When that happens, you want to know why, and the best way to find out is to send them a CSAT survey. This will help you uncover the reasons behind their decision. And maybe even win them back.

CSAT Examples and best practices

The standard CSAT template is as follows:

• A question: “How would you rate your shopping experience on a scale of 1-5?”
• A rating scale of 1-5 or 1-7
• A follow-up question that asks the user to leave a comment or explain the reasoning behind their response
• Optionally, you can add a third question that asks “Is it OK if we follow up on your response?”. This can help you both build your audience and get a chance to talk to your customers 1-on-1 to uncover even more insight.

At its core, CSAT is a super-simple survey, and since it only has two questions it naturally has with a pretty high completion rate.

However, if you want to maximize your response rates, here are some best practices to keep in mind:

Ask for the customer’s rating first
By asking your customers to leave a rating the first thing they do, you increase the validity of the answer. If they are answering a bunch of questions without knowing why they are doing it, they can become annoyed and give you a bad rating just because they don’t understand the purpose of the survey.

Don’t ask more questions than you need
You only need 2 questions in a CSAT survey. The rating and a feedback field. If you don’t need the data for your research, don’t ask for it. All it does is create an annoying survey that confuses customers as to why they are answering it.

Use reasonable wording for your response labels
If you have labels below the rating scale, use neutral wording like “wonderful” and “awful”, “great” and “not good”, or “best” and “worst”. The labels are just to give the user a hint to help them quickly understand what the scale rating means.

Use ONE scale for all your CSAT surveys
By using the same scale whenever you run a CSAT survey makes it easier to track your results over time. And more often than not, moving up from 1-5 to 1-7 just adds a lot of noise to your score without increasing the value of the result. Pick one scale (1-5 or 1-7), and stick to it.

Don’t get hung up on using numbers or smileys (they work equally well)
What type of question you use to measure CSAT depends entirely on your personal preference, and what fits your brand. If your brand is super serious, then go with plain numbers. If your brand is more playful, then why not go with a smiley-rating.

What is customer lifetime value?

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a metric that measures the total worth of a customer over the entire duration of their relationship with you. This metric helps you understand the long-term value of your customer base, guiding strategies for acquisition, retention, and growth.

Metric Overview

CLV estimates the total revenue you can expect from a single customer account, accounting for the revenue generated, the costs of acquiring and serving the customer, and the retention rate.

How to calculate customer lifetime value

To calculate CLV, use this formula:

CLV = (Average purchase value × Purchase frequency) × Customer lifespan 

If you want , consider adding factors such as gross margin, returns, and retention costs.

CLV Benchmarks

It can be hard to benchmark your customer lifetime value, because every industry, vertical, and audience is different. However, here are some general benchmarks to follow:

• Bad CLV: CLV is equal to or less than your customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• Good CLV: CLV is 2-3x higher than your CAC.
• Great CLV: CLV is more than 3x higher than your CAC.

Tips to increase your customer lifetime value

1. Improve your customer experience: A good customer experience with exceptional customer service and personalized content keep customers coming back.
2. Increase average order value: Use cross-selling and upselling strategies to encourage larger purchases.
3. Improve retention rates: Implement loyalty programs and engage customers with regular, relevant communication.
4. Improve your onsite marketing: Focus on high-value customer segments, behavioral segmentation, and tailor your marketing strategies to meet their needs.
5. Provide excellent customer support: Quick and efficient resolution of issues builds trust and encourages repeat business.

How to track customer lifetime value

• Triggerbee: Offers insights into customer behavior, helping you track and optimize CLV through personalized experiences and targeted campaigns.
• HubSpot: Provides comprehensive CRM and analytics tools to monitor customer interactions and calculate CLV.
• Google Analytics: Tracks customer activity and revenue, aiding in the calculation and analysis of CLV.
• Klaviyo: Integrates with ecommerce platforms to analyze purchase data and predict CLV.

What is it?

Customer experience (CX) is the overall perception and feeling a customer has as a result of interactions with a brand’s products, services, and marketing efforts at every touchpoint. It encompasses the entire customer journey, from initial contact to post-purchase support, shaping how customers view and engage with a brand. A good customer experience strategy can help you:

• improve customer satisfaction by 10-20%
• boost sales conversions by 10-15%
• make you less dependent on ads
• and let you take full control of your growth.

A huge part of the customer experience (at least the digitally) is having a very user friendly website that encourages its users to… use it. If your customers can glance at your website and know exactly where to click to find what they’re looking for, you’ve won half of the battle. Simplicity always wins. Think of it this way: You’re not just selling products; you’re delivering a feeling that makes people want to come back. One interaction at a time. Do it right and sales will naturally follow.

Why is having a good customer experience important?

Having a good customer experience is important because it will help you differentiate your brand in a very crowded marketplace. Look: most online brands are trying to catch the same fish as everyone else. The standard e-commerce playbook is made up of email- and influencer marketing, affiliate programs, and Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads.

In the current market, you win by using your data better than your competition. There are more loyalty programs than ever, and consumers have more choices than ever. Having a good customer experience strategy means that you’re adapting to these changes.

• Differentiation in a crowded market: In today’s competitive landscape, exceptional customer experience sets a brand apart from its competitors. By focusing on CX, brands can build stronger relationships with customers, encouraging loyalty and repeat business.
• Increased customer satisfaction: A positive customer experience leads to higher satisfaction rates. Satisfied customers are more likely to leave positive reviews, recommend the brand to others, and become repeat buyers.
• Higher conversion rates: Optimizing the customer experience can directly impact conversion rates. When customers find interactions with a brand enjoyable, they are more likely to complete purchases and come back for more.
• Enhanced customer loyalty: Consistently delivering a great customer experience builds trust and loyalty. Loyal customers not only provide repeat business but also refer their friends.

The role of personalization in the customer experience

Personalization is one of the most effective ways to enhance the customer experience. In our experience personalization is best used when it:

• increases the clarity of an interaction
• decreases friction and confusion
• reduces anxiety
• minimizes distractions

Take a look at Amazon’s homepage.

Amazon has five personalized sections of their homepage:

1. They display the name of the account owner (right of search bar)
2. Delivery address (left of search bar)
3. Felix’s Amazon (in the sub-navigation menu)
4. “Keep shopping for” where they showcase my latest visited products.
5. “Buy again” where they show my last 4 purchases.

Amazon is a marketplace, which means you buy products from third-party sellers and not directly from Amazon. Imagine if I experienced issues with the thermometer shown in my “Buy again”-section. The first place I’d look is in a cabinet to see if I still have the box it came in.

But I’m the kind of person who throws boxes away immediately. So I would go to Amazon and navigate to the product page…

Luckily for me, Amazon have personalized product pages with notifications on the products. Not only do they tell me the purchase date, but I can review it AND get product support.

This is an incredibly simple but powerful way of using personalization strategically.

In other words, personalization is MUCH MORE than simply adding product recommendations and tailoring on-page search results. It’s about using the data you have about your customers to give them what they need, at the time they need it.

The second reason why personalization is important is because the apps we use on a daily basis are setting the bar for digital expectations. TikTok, Netflix, Instagram, Spotify, Google, Youtube, Linkedin. Everything is personalized to you and your interests.

Your customers’ are already comparing the simplicity and accessibility on your site to the services and other brands they interact with. Personalization makes every interaction less confusing and relevant which should be the main purpose of any personalization.

If you want to learn more about personalization, we’ve compiled an insightful list of 29 unique personalization examples ranging from how to use customer data to improve your customer experiences, to using specific tools like exit-intent popups for cart recovery.

Customer experience best practices

Understand your customers
Getting to know your customers is the first and most important step to creating a great customer experience. Use onsite surveys to conduct thorough audience research and understand your customers’ needs, preferences, and pain points. Use CSAT surveys, NPS surveys, feedback forms, and analytics to gather data. This insight will help you tailor your offerings and interactions to meet your customers expectations.

Personalize interactions
Use customer data to personalize interactions at every touchpoint. Personalization can include customized product recommendations, personalized emails, and tailored marketing messages. Tools like Triggerbee can help track and use customer behavior to enhance personalization.

Streamline the customer journey
Ensure that the customer journey is smooth and intuitive. Simplify navigation on your website, offer quick and easy checkout processes, and provide clear and concise information. Remove any obstacles that could cause frustration or confusion.

Offer excellent customer support
Provide multiple channels for customer support, including live chat, email, and phone support. Train your support team to be responsive, knowledgeable, and empathetic. Quick and effective resolution of issues enhances the overall customer experience.

Collect and act on feedback
Regularly collect feedback from customers to identify areas for improvement. Use tools like CSAT and NPS surveys to gauge customer satisfaction. Act on the feedback to make necessary changes and show customers that their opinions are valued. If you want to see a real-life example of how to do this, check out how Swedish home decor brand Cervera used a CSAT survey to improve their customer experience.

FAQ

How can I measure customer experience?
Common metrics to measure customer experience include Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES). These metrics provide insights into customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the ease of interactions with your brand.

What role does personalization play in customer experience?
Personalization is crucial for enhancing customer experience. It involves tailoring interactions based on individual customer data, making the experience more relevant and engaging. Personalized experiences can lead to higher satisfaction, loyalty, and conversion rates.

How can Triggerbee help improve customer experience?
Triggerbee provides tools for tracking customer behavior, collecting feedback, and personalizing interactions. By leveraging these capabilities, you can gain deeper insights into customer preferences and deliver a more tailored and seamless experience across all touchpoints.

What’s the difference between user experience vs. customer experience?
User experience is how people interact with your digital platforms. UX is focused on informational hierarchy, visual hierarchy, and design elements. Your user experience (UX) is an important part of the overall customer experience (CX). But the UX is a specific part focused on how the customer experience is delivered. Customer experience refers to all of the interactions in the customer journey and is about the perception of your brand across all touchpoints.

What’s the difference between customer satisfaction vs. customer experience
Customer satisfaction is a momentary measure of your customers happiness, and is measured with a CSAT survey. CSAT stands for Customer Satisfaction Score, and it’s a survey that usually contains a simple question with a response on a scale of 1-5. The standard CSAT survey question is: “How satisfied are you with your shopping experience?” If you want to know more about measuring your customer satisfaction, read this blog post about CSAT surveys.

What is behavioral segmentation?

Behavioral segmentation means grouping customers based on their online (and offline) behaviour. Your customer’s behaviour is an important criteria to consider when creating audience segments for email marketing, advertising, and onsite marketing. Your customers behaviour is highly correlated to intent (their likelihood to buy). Here are a few examples of behavioral signals used when creating behavior-based segments:

• Website activity
• Visited pages
• Traffic source
• Purchase frequency
• Discount usage
• Geographic location

This type of data is also referred to as first-party data, and it can be combined with zero-party data like customer status and demographics like gender and age in order to create more detailed customer segments.

How is behavior data collected?

Data used in behavioral segmentation is mainly collected by onsite marketing software (like Triggerbee) and marketing automation software like Klaviyo and Custobar.

Marketing automation tools needs behavioral data from customers browsing your website in order to trigger automated email flows. But the data they collect is often limited to certain events such as completed purchases or add to carts. Meaning, if you want to use behavioral segmentation effectively you need to collect events from your website as well. Otherwise you won’t be able to accurately target your customers with relevant messages.

For example, in order for an email marketing software to be able to send abandoned cart emails, it needs both an email address (the recipient) AND behavioral data that can correctly identify customers on the website who has 1) added a product to their cart, 2) has not yet made a purchase, and 3) has abandoned the website.

Here is an example of how behavioral data looks in onsite marketing platform Triggerbee:

Why is Behavioral Segmentation Important?

1. Focused marketing efforts
   Behavioral segmentation allows you to focus your marketing efforts on your most engaged prospects. By leveraging behavioral data, you can exclude uninterested prospects and email subscribers who haven’t engaged with your content or brand recently. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for conversions, you can focus on the individuals who have shown genuine interest in your products. You’ll increase the likelihood of connecting with someone who values your communication, and increase your chances of making a sale.
2. Enhanced relevance and increased messaging accuracy
   Behavioral segmentation makes it relatively easy to craft highly relevant messaging that resonates with each segment. Even minor adjustments in your message can significantly improve its impact and how it’s perceived by your customers. Simply by addressing the unique motivations of different customer groups. This leads to more effective promotions and a better overall customer experience. Personalized content stands out, making your marketing campaigns more compelling and engaging.
3. Proactive marketing
   One of the key advantages of behavioral segmentation is its ability to transform your marketing efforts from reactive to proactive. Traditional marketing often reacts to generic customer needs or trends, but behavioral segmentation allows you to anticipate customer actions. You can schedule campaigns to be triggered based on past and predicted behaviors. For example, you can implement a “Buying Intent” strategy where an email or SMS automation is triggered when a customer visits a specific product or category multiple times within a set period. This proactive approach has high open and conversion rates, significantly boosting your chances of driving sales and improving your customer experience.

Behavioral segmentation best practices

Collect person-level data
To effectively segment your audience based on behavior, you need a robust dataset. This data should come from various touchpoints such as purchase history, website interactions, email responses, and social media activities. Tools like Triggerbee offer detailed person-level tracking that captures extensive data about user interactions on your website. By having a broad and deep dataset, you can create more accurate and insightful segments, ensuring that your marketing messages are well-targeted.

Use advanced analytics tools
Leveraging advanced analytics tools is crucial for analyzing and interpreting the vast amounts of data collected. Tools like Google Analytics provide comprehensive insights into user behavior, helping identify patterns and trends. Triggerbee, for instance, not only tracks behavior but also integrates this data with your CRM, giving a holistic view of each customer’s journey. These tools help in uncovering hidden insights and opportunities that can be used to refine your segmentation strategy.

Create dynamic segments
Behavioral segmentation should not be a one-time task. Consumer behaviors and preferences change over time, and your segments need to reflect these changes. Continuously update and refine your segments based on new data and evolving behaviors. For instance, if a customer who was previously inactive starts showing interest in a new product category, they should be moved to a different segment to receive relevant marketing messages. This dynamic approach ensures that your marketing remains relevant and effective.

Integrate with marketing automation
To maximize the benefits of behavioral segmentation, integrate your behavioral data with marketing automation software. This integration allows for real-time updates and targeted messaging. Triggerbee syncs behavioral data with various marketing automation platforms, enabling you to create and adjust behavior-based segments seamlessly. Automated campaigns can then be triggered based on specific behaviors, ensuring timely and relevant communication with your audience.

Tools that allow you to create behavioral segments

Triggerbee: Triggerbee is an onsite marketing software that uses person-level tracking to collect behavioral data about your website visitors, and syncs it to your marketing automation software. This helps you create behavior-based segments based on web activity and interests.
Marketing automation software: Rule, Klaviyo, Custobar, Mailchimp, Voyado, Mailerlite, and most other marketing automation software lets you build audience segments based on your customers behavior to some extent. If you want to create audience segments based on website activity and customer “interests”, you need to integrate with an onsite marketing software like Triggerbee.

If you want to learn more about behavioral segmentation and see real-life examples how it’s used by companies like Amazon, you can read our guide to behavioral segmentation.

FAQ

Why is behavioral segmentation important?
Behavioral segmentation allows businesses to deliver more personalized and relevant marketing messages, increasing engagement and conversion rates. By understanding and responding to specific consumer behaviors, you can create more effective marketing strategies.

How can onsite marketing software help with behavioral segmentation?
Onsite marketing software tracks person-level data on websites, and integrates with your CRM. This enables you to create precise, behavior-based segments and deliver targeted marketing messages both on your website and in your owned channels like Email and SMS.

What types of behaviors should be considered in segmentation?
Key behaviors to consider include purchase history, product usage frequency, browsing patterns, and response to previous marketing campaigns. These insights can help you tailor your marketing activities to meet the specific needs and preferences of different customer groups.

What is identification rate?

Identification rate is the percentage of returning website visitors who have previously shared their personal information, such as an email address or phone number, with your brand. This metric is crucial for brands who are invested in personalization and enhancing customer experience, because it indicates how many of your visitors can be targeted with personalized content.

Key benefits of visitor identification

Even if visitor identification is critical for accurate personalization, it plays a pretty important role in many of the “regular” marketing activities as well. For example, if you want to be able to send out abandoned cart emails, your marketing automation software needs to know who to send the abandonment email to. Here are some other benefits:

• Personalized marketing: Knowing who your visitors are allows you to tailor content, promotions, and messages specifically to them.
• Improved customer experience: Personalization can help you decrease friction, confusion and increase clarity for your customers in their shopping journey.
• Data-driven insights: Tracking your identification rate provides insights into visitor behavior and preferences, which helps you refine your marketing and CX strategies.
• Increased ROI: Targeted marketing efforts are more effective compared to broad marketing activies. Because identification allows you to single out .
• Essential for 1-to-1 marketing: Identification rate is necessary for one-to-one marketing and communication. Without identity resolution software to recognize and remember visitors, businesses can’t trigger personalized communications like abandoned cart emails or browse abandonment emails.
• GDPR Compliance: This practice is compliant with GDPR as long as the user has consented when they signed up for a newsletter or registered for a membership. Additionally, the identity is only resolved on the brand’s own website.

How to calculate identification rate

To calculate the identification rate, use the following formula:

Identification Rate = (Number of Identified Visitors / Total Number of Visitors) × 100

For example, if you have 200 identified visitors out of 1,000 total visitors, the identification rate would be: (200/1000) × 100 = 20%

Levels of Identification Rate

Bad: Below 20%
Good: Above 25% (this is the average)
Amazing: 35%+

Example Tools

Several tools can help you track and improve your identification rate. Triggerbee, for instance, excels in gathering insightful data on your customers and using this information to deploy targeted onsite campaigns. By leveraging real-time data, Triggerbee helps you create a seamless experience for your visitors, guiding them from their first click to becoming loyal customers. Other tools in the market include HubSpot and Salesforce, which also offer robust visitor identification and personalization features.