Measuring customer satisfaction in chat: CSAT, NPS and what they're actually good for

The three most-used metrics

CSAT measures satisfaction with a single conversation, right after it ends. NPS measures overall willingness to recommend your brand. CES measures how much effort a customer had to put in to get help.

For chat, CSAT is the most useful: it's specific, immediate, and tied directly to a conversation and a specialist.

Ask at the right moment

Ask right after closing, in the same window, with a single click. Every extra step halves your response rate. One question, at most one open comment field — nothing more.

The open comment is the gold

The score tells you how things are going; the comment tells you why. Read every open response weekly and categorise them. Usually about eighty percent of dissatisfaction traces back to a handful of structural causes — often outside customer service itself.

• Unclear information on the website or product page.
• Delivery times that don't match the promise.
• Policies staff aren't allowed to explain or deviate from.

What to do with the results

Tie every score to an owner and an action. Share results with marketing and logistics, not just the service team. Customer service data is the cheapest form of customer research you have — as long as someone actually acts on it.