NPS vs CSAT Surveys: Which Customer Satisfaction Metric is Best to Use?

NPS vs CSAT surveys: which is better for measuring customer satisfaction? The short answer is both since each method analyzes customer loyalty but at a different depth. So, let’s break it down and study what method is best for measuring user sentiment and why.

Keep reading to learn:

• Pros and cons of NPS and CSAT surveys.
• How to improve customer loyalty and customer satisfaction.
• NPS vs CSAT: why you should use them together.
• How to build CSAT and NPS surveys.

Let’s get into it!

What is NPS?

A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty metric that measures how likely your customers are to recommend your product or service to others.

It’s based on a simple question: “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?” with responses on a 0-10 scale, where 10 is “extremely likely,” and 0 is “not at all likely.”

NPS helps SaaS companies analyze and measure customer loyalty.

Follow up your NPS survey with an open-ended question to dig deeper into the score and get qualitative feedback.

What are the benefits of NPS surveys?

Let’s take a look at the pros of NPS surveys:

• Increases customer satisfaction since you can locate friction points in follow-up questions and address them with in-app experiences.
• Measures and improves customer loyalty.
• It helps create more advocates for your product, as happy customers are more likely to recommend it to others. Those who give you a score of 8+ are loyal customers and potential brand advocates.
• Reduces customer churn. NPS gives you insights into what’s causing friction, so you can proactively act on it.
• Boosts product growth. You can create in-app experiences that greatly promote detractor product adoption by analyzing promoter usage behaviors.

What are the limitations of NPS surveys?

If a qualitative question doesn’t follow NPS, the NPS score is just a number that tells you little to nothing.

When to send NPS surveys?

There are a few best practices to keep in mind when sending NPS surveys:

• When to send NPS surveys to users depends critically on the customer journey. And the best method to send them is to set up triggers based on certain user behavior, their actions, or their in-app experiences.
• Use important product milestones to decide when to trigger NPS surveys. This could be after they’ve made a purchase, used your feature, or contacted customer support. Choose the point in your customer journey to assess and trigger surveys after the action is completed.
• Send NPS surveys periodically to track changes in customer happiness.
• Keep your NPS survey short and to the point. You want customers to provide feedback quickly and easily without feeling like they’re being bogged down by overly sophisticated follow-up questions.

Lastly, avoid sending NPS surveys to inactive users since they have no recent experience with the product, and won’t have any recommendations.

Below is an example of a transactional NPS survey by Wise that is triggered after a user has completed a transaction.

How to calculate customer loyalty with NPS

An NPS metric tracks customer sentiment towards your product and the likelihood of them recommending it on a scale of 0-10 (with 10 being most likely).

To calculate your NPS score, you subtract the percentage of respondents who answered 0 to 6 (detractors) from the percentage of respondents who answered 9 or 10 (promoters).

This gives you a score that can range from -100 to 100. A positive score indicates more promoters than detractors, while a negative score indicates more detractors.

Here’s an example:

If 40% of respondents are promoters and 20% are detractors, your NPS score would be 20 (40% – 20%). And if 60% of respondents are promoters and 80% are detractors, your NPS score would be -20 (60% – 80%).

A good NPS score will vary depending on your industry and customer base. However, a score of 0 or higher is a good NPS score, while a score of 50+ is a high NPS score.

We recommend you use a free online NPS calculator.

How to improve NPS score?

Firstly, tag your NPS responses for better visualization so that you can see patterns and trends among detractors.

You can do so with the NPS tagging feature by Userpilot that label follow-up responses considering the sentiment. Thus, the report below depicts product drawbacks that lead to detractors (and probably churn).

Knowing how customers feel and what bothers them, you can proactively reach out to detractors and offer personalized help to boost product adoption, and increase their satisfaction level. Likewise, engage with a neutral group and try to convert them into promoters.

What is CSAT?

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures how satisfied customers are with a company’s products or services. This metric is typically collected through customer satisfaction surveys.

You can use CSAT as a general indicator of overall satisfaction. However, it’s important to keep in mind that CSAT doesn’t always provide the most accurate picture of customer satisfaction. This is because CSAT only measures momentary satisfaction and doesn’t consider the overall customer experience.

When to send CSAT surveys?

Use CSAT at different customer touchpoints in the user journey to understand if users are satisfied with your product.

Here are the best practices for sending user satisfaction surveys:

• When you want to measure customer satisfaction with a specific or new feature.
• After reaching a milestone in the user journey.
• When you want to compare customer satisfaction across different features or services.
• For getting feedback on a specific customer experience or an onboarding flow.

What are the benefits of CSAT surveys?

• Less customer churn as you can detect and address roadblocks that degrade the customer experience.
• Enhanced customer retention and loyalty since customers feel how much effort you put into developing a product based on their needs.
• Increased customer lifecycle: Customers are more likely to make recurring product payments if satisfied.
• Improved brand loyalty: Satisfied customers stay longer.

What are the limitations of CSAT surveys?

First, CSAT surveys only measure customer satisfaction at a given time. This can be problematic because it doesn’t provide insight into how customers feel about your product over time.

That said, customer satisfaction metrics are great for evaluating a particular customer experience, like an interaction with a new feature.

How to calculate customer satisfaction score with CSAT surveys

To calculate a customer satisfaction score, ask your customers to rate their level of satisfaction with a specific interaction. Then, average all the responses and multiply by 100 to get your company’s CSAT score.

For example, if you surveyed 100 customers and 42 of them rated their satisfaction as a 4 or 5, your company’s CSAT score would be 42%.

The score in the above example is very low and means something is wrong with the product experience. Aim for CSAT scores of above 70%.

How to improve CSAT?

First, set the right goal for your CSAT. Having a CSAT score of 90% is wonderful, but keep in mind benchmarks for your industry. Be realistic with numbers and set SMART goals.

Second, personalize the customer experience you deliver across the product. Survey answers give insights you can use to segment users by their scores and create more personal interactions with each user group.

Userpilot will help you segment customers by multiple metrics, including customer feedback, demographic, firmographics, etc.

NPS vs CSAT: What is the difference?

In a nutshell, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty and advocacy. CSAT, or Customer Satisfaction Score, measures customers’ satisfaction with a recent purchase or interaction.

Let’s dive into the nitty-gritty.

Each survey has a different goal

CSAT surveys communicate the overall user satisfaction with a specific area of your product, feature, or even support team and the onboarding process. Product teams use the CSAT data to locate issues with the product in real-time.

NPS surveys aim to identify passionate advocates and detractors and understand what drives customer sentiment.

Each survey provides different level metrics

CSAT surveys allow you to analyze interactions or experiences at a micro-level, while NPS provides you with macro-level insights.

NPS vs CSAT surveys: Which is better for collecting customer feedback?

It heavily depends on your goals. Thus, NPS surveys focus more on customer loyalty and future purchase intent, making them ideal for businesses that want to gauge customer satisfaction over time.

On the other hand, CSAT surveys provide more detailed insights into customer perception, as they usually include questions about specific features or experiences measured on the fly.

SaaS companies use CSAT to make immediate improvements to their products, for instance, to a newly implemented feature.

NPS vs CSAT surveys: Should you use them together?

The short answer is yes. NPS and CSAT scores are not interchangeable, so it’s better to use both to paint a complete picture of how your brand/product is performing.

NPS will show you the overall sentiment around your customer service, product, etc., while CSAT provides actionable data about a specific interaction.

How to build NPS and CSAT surveys with Userpilot

You can measure in-app customer engagement metrics with in-built microsurveys code-free. Userpilot features enable you to quickly build personalized, flexible, contextually relevant in-app microsurveys targeted to different user segments.

Here’s how.

Segment users to collect feedback more contextually

Userpilot allows you to collect feedback at exactly the right moment by segmenting your users at different stages of their customer journey.

This ensures that you’re always collecting relevant customer feedback that you can use to inform your product roadmap.

Slice and dice your customer base by multiple criteria:

• User data (ID, subscription plans, signup date, etc.)
• Company data
• Feature and Events (reached goals and milestones in the user journey; hovers and other in-app events)
• Pre-existing segments
• Content engagement (interactions across a knowledge base, the onboarding flows, etc.)
• User feedback

Create NPS and microsurvey templates

Once you decide and select a group of users you want to target, build microsurvey templates for NPS and CSAT.

Userpilot has a built-in NPS functionality that allows you to collect data, tag NPS responses, and analyze the sentiment of survey responses. You can also build CSAT surveys inside a modal or slideout.

Access customizable templates in the Userpilot library to create in-app surveys effortlessly — or design from scratch.

Analyze and act on data

Make use of NPS response tagging as it allows you to tag each response and group them into categories, such as “ease of navigation” or “missing features”.

Analyzing NPS feedback will help you understand what drives customer satisfaction and what disengages customers from your product. You can achieve all these with Userpilot, code-free.

Conclusion

NPS and CSAT surveys are both valuable tools for collecting customer feedback. Use them to understand friction points and winning experiences.

Act on new knowledge to meet customer needs with product features and tailored in-app experiences. All of which contribute to improved retention and revenue growth.

Want to get started with measuring customer experience metrics? Get a Userpilot Demo and learn how to build and analyze NPS and CSAT surveys.