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Your customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a measure of how satisfied a customer feels after they shop with your business.
Qualtrics found 72% of shoppers would spend more with brands that offer a great customer experience. But considering the average CSAT score for an ecommerce business is just 79%, there’s plenty of room for improvement.
This guide shares how to measure your CSAT score, when to use this type of feedback survey, and how it compares to other customer service metrics.
What is a customer satisfaction score?
A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a percentage score that measures customer satisfaction with a specific product or interaction. Also known as a client satisfaction score, CSAT is used to benchmark product, service, or support interactions. It’s frequently part of a customer service report created to measure customer service key performance indicators (CS KPIs).
How to calculate CSAT
To calculate CSAT, use the following formula:
Number of satisfied customers / Number of survey responses x 100 = CSAT
For example, say 50 people fill out your five-point scale survey, and the customer responses are:
- 5 (Very Satisfied): 12 people
- 4 (Satisfied): 20 people
- 3 (Neutral): 2 people
- 2 (Dissatisfied): 10 people
- 1 (Very Dissatisfied): 6 people
Add the number of 4- and 5 responses and divide that number by 50, the total number of people. Then multiple that figure by 100 to get a percentage.
(32/50) x 100 = 64
In this example, 64% of respondents were satisfied with their customer experience. That is your CSAT score.
What is a good CSAT score?
The average CSAT score was 76.1% in Q2 2026, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, down from 76.9% in the same quarter of 2025.
However, CSAT data varies by industry:
- General merchandise: 79%
- Specialty retailers: 80%
- Online retailers: 79%
- Supermarkets: 78%
“[We] try to monitor everything—from average response time, how many tickets are formed, [and] how fast something is handled,” says Razvan Romanescu, cofounder of Nailboo, in a Shopify Masters interview. “Customer satisfaction’s at the frontier of all that, because an unhappy customer is louder than the happy ones … especially with the internet.”
When should you measure CSAT?
If you try to measure your CSAT too early, your customers may not know how they feel about an interaction. If you measure too late, they may forget the details of the shopping experience.
Calculate your CSAT scores by surveying customers:
- At any key touchpoints or customer lifecycle moments: Review your customer journey map and survey customers after they’ve had a few days to try it. Automate this follow-up process with Shopify Flow.
- After an update or change to a product: Ask customers how they feel about new features or changes as they’re using them. Marcus Milione, founder of Minted New York, did this by sharing a prototype tote bag. “Bringing your customer along on the journey helps them buy into the product even more, because they are part of that entire process,” Marcus says in a Shopify Masters interview.
- After an event: If your company hosts an opening, product launch, or any other event, you can collect customer feedback from guests who attended to see if they enjoyed the event. Ariane Goldman did this when she founded Hatch.
- After a customer service interaction: A check-in immediately after a customer interaction can indicate the helpfulness and effectiveness of your company’s customer support. Zach Dannett, cofounder of Tumble, does this with Shopify Inbox.
“By immediately asking if their issue was resolved, we can clarify any outstanding questions on the spot or escalate if needed,” says Zach. “The rating gives quantitative data on chat satisfaction we can track over time.”
How to run a CSAT survey
A survey asks customers how satisfied they are with a product or experience on a scale of 1 to 5. It might also use an emoji rating, stars, or a slider. Here’s what that might look like:
How would you rate your experience today?
- 1: Very dissatisfied
- 2: Dissatisfied
- 3: Neutral
- 4: Satisfied
- 5: Very satisfied
There are various ways to send a CSAT survey:
- Email: Deloitte’s 2025 study found 89% of customer support teams worldwide used email for sending CSAT surveys, more than any other contact channel, followed by phone calls (87%) and chat (46%). Automate this with Shopify Messaging or apps like POWR, Zigpoll, and FeedbackBuddy.
- Reviews: In BrightLocal’s 2026 report, 28% of consumers said they always left a review when a business asked them to, up from 16% the year before.
- Checkout: SilkSilky uses existing customer touchpoints to collect feedback without having to reach out later. They use Shopify’s checkout page customization to display a survey immediately after a customer places an order. This method’s response rate is more than triple that of email marketing.
Pros and cons of CSAT
There are upsides and downsides to using CSAT scores as a measure of customer satisfaction:
Pros
Customer satisfaction surveys are useful because they’re:
- Quick for the customer: Shoppers have to answer just one multiple choice question.
- Easy to measure.:CSAT is a simple metric that quickly gauges general customer success. You can monitor how CSAT scores change over time after implementing new customer satisfaction strategies.
Cons
The downsides of CSAT scores are:
- Prone to result bias: Measuring a CSAT relies on self-reporting, which is prone to self-selection bias. Very positive responses and very negative customer feedback may be over-represented. This can skew results and inaccurately portray wider customer sentiment.
- Cultural bias: A four-star rating may mean great service to some and mediocre service to others. People from different cultures or backgrounds may perceive the rating systems differently.
- Very limited information: CSAT score tells you how many customers were unhappy or happy with a specific experience, not why. Combine it with open-ended customer satisfaction survey questions to gather context on why they gave that answer.
CSAT vs. NPS vs. CES
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) gauges customer happiness on a specific product or interaction. Net Promoter Score (NPS), measures a customer’s opinion of the organization more broadly. Customer effort score (CES) is a measurement of how difficult or easy a customer finds their interaction with your company.
Here’s how each of these other metrics compare:
| Metric | CSAT | Customer effort score (CES) | Net Promoter Score (NPS) |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it measures | How satisfied a customer is with a product or service | How easy it was for customers to do something | How likely a customer is to recommend your brand |
| Survey question | How satisfied are you with this experience? | How easy was it to resolve this task? | How likely are you to recommend us? |
| Useful for | Finding points of friction throughout the customer journey | Prioritizing user experience improvements to make the customer journey easier | Predicting churn and referrals |
| Industry benchmark | 79% | 6+ out of 10 | 50+ out of 100 |
Customer satisfaction score FAQ
What does CSAT stand for?
CSAT stands for customer satisfaction score. It measures how satisfied customers are with a particular product, service, or interaction with a business.
How do you calculate a CSAT score?
Calculate CSAT scores by asking customers to rate how satisfied they are with a customer experience on a scale of 1 to 5. The percentage of customers who answer 4 or 5 is your CSAT score.
What's a good CSAT score?
A good customer satisfaction score for ecommerce brands is 79%.
Try to capture positive and negative customer service examples to help with employee training ideas and customer services skills development. These might include customer care soft skills, such as empathy and active listening.
Which is better: NPS or CSAT?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CSAT (customer satisfaction score) are two different metrics with different applications. NPS measures customer sentiment by quantifying customer loyalty and a customer’s opinion of the organization as a whole, whereas CSAT measures customer satisfaction with a specific interaction.
If you want to know if a customer recommends your brand to a friend, opt for NPS. If you want to know if they enjoyed a product, CSAT is a better measure.
What is the 5-point scale for customer satisfaction?
One way of measuring customer satisfaction is to create a one-question survey that uses a five-point scale for customer satisfaction, with 1 being the worst and 5 being the best. In other words, 1 = very dissatisfied, 2 = dissatisfied, 3 = neutral, 4 = satisfied, 5 = very satisfied.
