When you are trying to measure customer experience and satisfaction, Three metrics inevitably come up as the ones to use: Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) vs. Net Promoter Score (NPS) vs. Customer Effort Score (CES). But all are not the same even though they seem similar!
Here we will explore the differences and help you understand how to use each one of them to measure customer satisfaction/sentiment.
It all starts with :
“What are you trying to accomplish with the data gathered?”
Set goals :
1. Product study: Long term customer sentiment
2. Feature/interaction study: Short term customer satisfaction for product or service
CSAT vs. NPS vs. CES:
| Survey Type | Study | Goal | Survey Insights |
| NPS | Product study 1. The question isn’t specific to any particular event or transaction. 2. The question is scoped to the brand overall, which means that if you survey your customers regularly, you’ll be able to monitor customer sentiment toward your brand over time.
| The goal is to monitor how your customer base feels about your company over time as your business and the market evolve. | To inform strategies that improve customer loyalty and revenue through increased customer retention, reduced churn, and word of mouth. |
| CSAT | Product study or Feature study (fits both) | Effective for tracking how your customer feels through the entire customer lifecycle. | If satisfaction drops at any touchpoint, you will have the insights necessary to follow up with the customer and close the feedback loop. |
| CES | Feature/service study | CES explores how much effort a customer feels they had to put in to resolve an issue and is usually used to help customer service improve resolution times and provide higher-quality experiences. | The hyper-focused effort score question is excellent for getting actionable feedback for specific use cases, frequently sent after customer service interactions. |
So, if your want to study the long-term sentiment of the product on the whole - NPS is the way out. But, if you want to explore the immediate-short time sentiment on customer experience with a feature or effort, choose CES. CSAT is versatile and can be used by modifying the company and feature questions in both cases.
But, how frequently should we launch each one of them?? - Stay tuned for next week
I hope this info helps you quickly choose a survey type based on your end goal and period of study.
Happy PX-ing! 