2024 KPI for Customer Service: Customer Satisfaction Rate 

Customer expectations are constantly increasing. And rightfully so. 

In 2023, more than 60% of customers said they’d leave after a single bad support experience. That’s 22% higher than it was in 2021. Happy customers are vital to any company’s success. Studies have shown that an incredible 97% of customers say that their purchasing decisions are often influenced by the consumer reviews that they read. 

But can companies really provide great customer service? Yes! In fact, some companies are able to achieve CSAT ratings of 90% or higher. And one of the best ways to measure customer service quality is through tracking key performance indicators. KPIs are essential as they are often a blueprint for companies to follow in terms of knowing which data to track and what global standards to meet or exceed. One of the most popular key performance indicators in customer service is customer satisfaction rating or simply CSAT. 

This article is a deep dive into CSAT, but you can find all the most important email, chat, and phone support KPIs in our 2024 Key Performance Indicators for Customer Service ebook.

What is Customer Satisfaction Rate? 

Customer Satisfaction Rate (CSAT) measures how satisfied your customers are after interacting with your team. It’s typically determined by sending a survey after an interaction is resolved and calculating the positive responses. Some companies prefer Net Promoter Score (NPS), but NPS scores tend to rate the product or brand as a whole, rather than focusing on customer support quality. 

Benchmarks 

We’ve gathered more than 300 data points from more than 150 different sources and even tapped our own network to obtain private data from customer service agents for each metric, so you can see what companies are achieving in real life. So here they are: the benchmarks for the best, worst, and average CSAT rates.

Follow these tips to improve your CSAT

1. Separate “actionable” and “unactionable” reviews.

Some customers’ CSAT reviews reflect how they feel about the product, rather than the support experience. Try to focus on reviews that are “actionable” – meaning they are tied to support agent behavior. If you’re getting a lot of product feedback, make sure to pass it on to the product team.

2. Aim for a fast response time.

Speed to answer is a huge driver of CSAT. Aim for low wait time on chat, fast response times on email, and a high service level on phone.

3. Dig into every DSAT.

Read every comment, particularly those in the negative reviews. If they don’t leave a comment, there are still ways to dig in. At Peak Support, our QA team will look at every interaction that received a poor review to deduce the reason. At a gaming client, we improved CSAT from 91% to 94% using this process.

4. Answer calls quickly and implement a conversational IVR system.

Answering as quickly as possible (and staffing appropriately) is essential for customer satisfaction in phone support. Conversational AI is also having an impact here—you can implement AI-powered IVR systems like Nextiva or Teneo that interact with customers in a natural way, resolving their issues or routing them intelligently to the correct team.

Partner with an award-winning BPO to improve CSAT rates 

Improving your customer satisfaction rating is not going to happen overnight. It will require some, if not a lot of work and even more patience. The great thing about business process outsourcing companies is that some of them, like Peak Support for example, have experience in attaining and maintaining impressive CSAT rates. They already have tools, resources, and talent in place. A reliable outsourcer such as Peak Support can take setting up and managing a customer service team off a business owner’s plate so that they can devote more of their time and attention to other important company matters. If you would like to discuss more about KPIs or if you need help building an exceptional outsourced customer service team, then get in touch with us today. The sales team at Peak Support are always ready to answer any and every question you might have.