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September 11, 2026

What Is CSAT? Definition, Calculation and Benchmarks

CSAT measures how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction. Learn the 1 to 5 scale, the exact calculation, benchmark ranges and when to run it.

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Inputly · 5 min read

TL;DR

CSAT asks customers to rate one specific interaction, usually on a 1 to 5 scale. Count the 4s and 5s, divide by all responses, multiply by 100. Above 80 percent is strong, 70 to 80 is healthy, and a falling trend matters more than the absolute number. Always read the score next to the response rate.

Author: Inputly

What is CSAT?

CSAT, or Customer Satisfaction Score, measures how happy a customer was with one specific interaction: a support ticket, an onboarding call, a purchase or a delivery. It is a single question, usually "How satisfied were you with this experience?", answered on a 1 to 5 scale or a set of word options. You report the share of respondents who picked the top answers. CSAT is short-term and transactional. It answers "how did that moment feel?" rather than "will you stay?", which makes it the fastest signal a team can collect after changing a step in the product. If you want the long-term relationship metric instead, read what NPS measures.

How is CSAT calculated?

  1. Ask one question with a clear, fixed scale, for example 1 to 5.
  2. Count the positive answers: 4 and 5 on a five-point scale, or "satisfied" and "very satisfied" on a word scale.
  3. Divide that count by all responses, including the negatives.
  4. Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Example: 180 positive answers out of 200 responses is 90 percent CSAT. Two choices decide whether the number is useful. First, the positive threshold must stay fixed, because moving it breaks the trend. Second, the response rate belongs next to the score: 95 percent from 20 self-selected fans is a far weaker signal than 75 percent from 400 customers.

| Scale point | Label | Counts as positive | | --- | --- | --- | | 5 | Very satisfied | Yes | | 4 | Satisfied | Yes | | 3 | Neutral | No | | 2 | Dissatisfied | No | | 1 | Very dissatisfied | No |

What is a good CSAT benchmark?

Above 80 percent is strong, 70 to 80 is common and healthy, and below 70 usually points to one broken step you can find and fix. Benchmarks by industry are useful only as rough context, because a free tool and a premium service live on different baselines. The number you can actually manage is your own trend, read together with the volume of responses. A stable 78 percent collected every week tells you more than a single 92 percent from a friendly audience.

What should you ask alongside the rating?

A rating without a reason is hard to act on. Add one open question: "What is the main reason for your score?" The answers convert the score into work you can schedule, and they often read like short feature requests, which you can route into the same place you gather product feedback. Keep the whole survey to two questions. Every extra question costs response rate, and response rate is what makes the score trustworthy.

How is CSAT different from NPS?

NPS asks how likely someone is to recommend you and predicts the relationship over time. CSAT asks how satisfied someone was with one moment and describes the present. Run CSAT after support, onboarding, a release or a delivery, and run NPS monthly or quarterly. The pair works well together: a falling CSAT in one touchpoint tells you exactly where the friction is, and a falling NPS tells you the relationship itself is cooling. When you design the questions, keep them neutral, the same way a good customer feedback survey avoids leading wording.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Should CSAT be anonymous? Give the option. Named responses let you follow up with unhappy customers, and anonymous responses surface honest criticism you would otherwise miss.
  2. Does a high CSAT mean customers will stay? Not on its own. A customer can be happy with support and still churn because the product lacks a feature, which is why you pair CSAT with closing the feedback loop.
  3. How often should you measure CSAT? Continuously, at the end of every interaction, then review the trend weekly. A one-off survey is a snapshot, not a measurement system.
  4. What if the score drops suddenly? Segment it by touchpoint, plan, or region. A concentrated drop is usually a bug or a policy change, and a broad drop is usually a positioning or pricing problem.
  5. Do you need a tool for CSAT? No, but a shared space helps. One inbox for scores, comments and follow-ups beats three spreadsheets that nobody updates.

Measure CSAT without spreadsheets. Create a free space on Inputly, send the two-question survey, and watch the trend as you ship.