CSAT vs NPS vs CES: When to use which survey?

Within 1 hour of the delivery, they sent me an NPS survey asking ‘How likely are you to recommend the product to your friends or acquaintances?’

This is one of the most common gaps of many CX programs.

Instead of sharing an NPS survey, at this touchpoint share a CSAT survey asking ‘How was your delivery experience?’

But there are many kinds of surveys out there. NPS, CES, and CSAT are the most common ones. All three help you garner customer feedback on their experience with your brands or the product.

So, CSAT vs NPS vs CES? Which one do you think is the best? And which one to send when? Let’s find out.

An introduction to NPS, CES, and CSATIf you want to measure how loyal your customers are to your brand, then NPS is the metric for you. It gauges customer loyalty and helps in preventing customer churn by asking one simple question –

And customers are required to choose from a scale of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely) and are categorized into three segments.

But, how to calculate NPS?Why is NPS used?

NPS is a relationship metric.

• a href="https://www.surveysensum.com/blog/nps-benchmarks/">Benchmark your NPS Score
As discussed, NPS is a relationship metric. It shouldn’t be asked after every transaction. Instead, it should you be asked,

Quarterly or biannually to monitor the ever-evolving customer emotions towards the brand.

1. Customer Effort Score Survey, on the other hand, measures the effort put in by the customer to get an issue resolved, a task completed, product purchase/return, or get the answer to their query.

   There are multiple ways to ask a CES question. Here’s one example of a 5-point Likert Scale:

   How to calculate CES?CES is used to identify how much time and effort is required by the customer to interact with the brand, use the product or feature, etc. It basically helps in resource optimization, improves tech or process, and boosts acquisition. How? When customers have to put minimal effort while using a product or service, they are likely to stay with the brand. The best examples of it are Spotify and Netflix.
   Customer Effort Score is ideally asked after a specific interaction between the customer and the brand. It talks about the easiness of that particular task or interaction, making it a perfect transactional metric.
   As discussed above, CES is asked immediately after an interaction/ transaction takes place between the brand and the customer. For example, after a service call, new feature use, ticket submission, etc.

   It can be asked on numeric scales, visual scales, stars, emoticons, whichever best suits your brand’s voice.

   • a href="https://www.surveysensum.com/blog/what-is-customer-satisfaction-score-csat-score/">Everything you need to know about the CSAT Score
   Your CSAT score can be calculated by the percentage of the top two boxes or by taking the average of the score.

   Why is CSAT used?

   When to use CSAT?

   However, in the case of the product, you need to give sufficient time to the customer to fully experience it before sending the survey.

   Which is the Right Survey for your Business Goal: NPS, CSAT, or CES?

   What is your company’s focus?

2. Loyalty
3. Performance
4. Churn / new opportunity
5. Benchmarking
6. Improve productivity
7. Proactive approach to reduce churn
8. Acquire new customers and many more

Here’s an example.

It measures the

If you want to reduce the customers’ effort, go for CES.
• overall customer effort score,
• the number of interactions required in handling issues, and
• the overall effort made by the customer in each service channel.

Which surveys should be taken at which touchpoints in an insurance company?The truth is NPS, CES, and CSAT, all are equally important metrics with their own purposes.

But, the choice of metrics is not the major factor in a successful CX program. Acting on the gathered insights is.

So the best way going forward is to choose the right survey based on the touchpoint/ transaction and ALWAYS act on the customers’ feedback.

About the Author

SurveySensum is a Customer Experience Management Platform that helps you make customer feedback actionable.

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