CSAT vs NPS: Which customer experience metric should you use?

If you had to ask any CX manager which metric they track, you’ll probably hear one of two acronyms: CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) or NPS (Net Promoter Score). They’ve become the go-to tools for understanding how customers feel about your products and services. 

But while both measure sentiment, they do it in very different ways. CSAT captures how happy customers are right now, in the moment of experience. NPS, on the other hand, measures long-term loyalty which is how likely customers are to stick around and recommend you to a friend or colleague. 

The real challenge lies in knowing when and how to use them. Used well, they can help you spot friction points, track improvements and predict growth. Used the wrong way, they can make things look better than they are or disguise valuable feedback you need.

In this article, we’ll unpack the key differences between CSAT and NPS. We’ll explore how each metric supports different stages of the customer journey. Finally, we’ll show how using them together can give you a more complete  view of customer satisfaction. 

TL;DR

• CSAT shows how happy customers felt in a specific moment, like after a support interaction or delivery. It’s great for spotting friction fast, but it won’t predict long-term loyalty.
• NPS looks at the overall relationship, measuring how likely someone is to recommend your brand. It’s ideal for tracking loyalty and advocacy, but it won’t surface touchpoint-level issues.
• Think of it as a snapshot vs trendline: CSAT shows how one experience went, while NPS shows whether customers feel loyal enough to stick around and refer others.
• Each metric has limits. CSAT is fast and specific but needs follow-up questions to add depth. NPS is simple and benchmark-friendly but vague without qualitative context.
• Using both together gives you the full picture, with CSAT helping you fix issues quickly and NPS helping you understand long-term sentiment and predict churn.
• Good survey design, smart follow-ups and consistent benchmarking turn both scores into insights you can actually use, not just numbers to report.
• Attest makes it easy to run NPS surveys, layer in quant and qual follow-ups and track loyalty across different audiences over time.

What is CSAT? 

Customer Satisfaction Score asks your customer: “How satisfied were you with this interaction?” It’s typically a close-ended survey question presented on a rating scale (like 1–5 or 1–10).

Because it’s triggered right after a touchpoint like a purchase, a support ticket or a delivery,  it’s known as a transactional metric. You’ll get a quick read on how a moment felt to the customer, but it won’t tell you much about the strength of their long-term relationship with your brand.

How to calculate CSAT

CSAT is usually shown as a percentage. The formula stays the same regardless of your scale:

📊CSAT % = (Number of satisfied customers ÷ Total responses) × 100

Here’s a quick example: 

Say 60 people complete a five-point CSAT survey. Their answers look like this:

• Very satisfied: 18
• Satisfied: 24
• Neutral: 5
• Dissatisfied: 8
• Very dissatisfied: 5

First, add up the responses counted as “satisfied” (the 18 “Very satisfied” responses plus the 24 “Satisfied” responses). 

You now have 42 satisfied customers out of 60 total responses.

Next, apply the formula: (42 ÷ 60) × 100 = 70%

What this tells you:

In this scenario, 70% of customers were satisfied with their experience. That’s a decent starting point, but the spread across neutral and dissatisfied answers shows there may be specific touchpoints worth reviewing.

So what score should you aim for?

Industry averages suggest “good” CSAT lives somewhere around 75-85 %. For example, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, online retail ecommerce brands averaged ~79 % in 2025, while other sectors scored lower. 

The key here  is to benchmark against your industry, your competitors and your own historical data. Aim for continuous improvement rather than chasing a universal target.

Pros and cons 

Once you know how to calculate CSAT and what “good” looks like in your industry, it’s worth looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the metric itself.

Pros

• Pinpoints satisfaction fast: Let’s you see how customers felt about a specific interaction almost immediately, so you can respond quickly if something isn’t working.
• Improves team-level processes: Because you can tie CSAT to a particular moment or team (support, fulfilment, onboarding), it becomes clear where operational fixes will have impact.
• Easy to roll out at scale: The format is simple, which makes CSAT ideal for frequent, high-volume feedback across multiple touchpoints.

Cons

• Doesn’t reflect long-term loyalty: A high score shows the interaction went well, but it won’t tell you if someone plans to stay, upgrade or recommend you.
• Lacks depth without follow-up questions: CSAT alone won’t explain why someone felt a certain way. Without an open-ended prompt, you lose the context that makes the number actionable.
• Prone to self-selection bias: You often hear from people who loved or hated the experience. Without enough neutral responses, the insight can feel skewed.
• Timing and external factors can distort results: Customer mood, outside frustrations or even the time of day can influence scores, making the signal noisier than it looks.

What is NPS?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures how likely your customers are to act as advocates for your brand. Essentially, how they feel about your overall relationship with them rather than just one isolated interaction. 

This data is easy to collect. You ask a simple question such as: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company / brand / product to a friend or colleague?”

Then. you’ll sort responses into three groups:

• Promoters (respondents that answer 9 or 10)
• Passives (respondents that answer 7 or 8)
• Detractors (respondents that answer 0 to 6)

The formula is as follows:

📊NPS = % Promoters − % Detractors

This will give you a score between –100 and +100.

Let’s walk through an example: Say 100 customers respond to your NPS survey. Their answers fall into these groups:

• Promoters (9–10): 58
• Passives (7–8): 24
• Detractors (0–6): 18

Convert each group into a percentage:

• Promoters: 58 ÷ 100 = 58%
• Passives: 24 ÷ 100 = 24%
• Detractors: 18 ÷ 100 = 18%

Now apply the formula: NPS = 58% − 18% = +40

An NPS of +40 is solid. You have a healthy base of advocates and relatively few detractors. The passive segment is sizable, though, which suggests there’s room to strengthen your customer experience and nudge more people into the Promoter range.

What is a “good” NPS score?

Benchmarks vary significantly by industry, but generally, an NPS score of 0 to 30 is considered “good” in many sectors, scores above 50 are “very strong”, and 70+ is often regarded as “world class”. For example: in the SaaS industry, a good NPS score averages at 50. 

Pros and cons of NPS

After benchmarking your score, it helps to step back and assess what NPS actually tells you about loyalty, and where it needs supporting questions or metrics to round out the picture.

Pros:

• Gives a clear loyalty signal: Provides a straightforward score that shows whether customers feel positively enough to promote your brand.
• Simple to execute and repeat: Easy to run at regular intervals, making it ideal for tracking shifts in sentiment over time.
• Useful for benchmarking: The universal scale (–100 to +100) lets you compare performance across teams, products, markets or competitors.
• Opens the door to deeper insight: When paired with a follow-up question, NPS reveals the motivations behind customer advocacy or frustration.

Cons:

• Doesn’t capture moment-specific issues: The question focuses on future recommendation intent, so it may miss immediate pain points.
• Score alone can be vague: Without qualitative context, the number can feel directionally helpful but not diagnostic.
  Can fluctuate for reasons beyond your control: External factors like market changes and personal circumstances may influence how people score you on a given day.
• Not suitable for every feedback need: It’s designed for loyalty so it won’t replace more detailed satisfaction metrics or task-level insights.

💡Pro tip: Want to lift your score? Take a look at our guide on how to improve NPS for practical ways to create more Promoters.

Key differences between CSAT and NPS

CSAT and NPS complement one another but they’re built for different types of insight. Here’s how they stack up against each other:

Aspect	CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)	NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Primary goal	Measures satisfaction with a specific product, service or interaction	Measures overall customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend
Type of metric	Transactional	Relational
Question example	“How satisfied were you with your recent purchase?”	“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
Response scale	1 to 5 (or sometimes 1 to 10)	0 to 10
Calculation method	(% of satisfied responses – usually 4 & 5) / total × 100	% Promoters (9–10) − % Detractors (0–6)
Best time to use	Immediately after a specific interaction	Periodically (e.g., quarterly) or post-major campaign
Focus area	Specific touchpoints (support call, checkout, delivery)	Overall brand perception or long-term relationship
Strengths	Quick to deploy, highly specific feedback	Industry-standard, tracks long-term loyalty trends
Limitations	Doesn’t predict loyalty or retention	Less detailed, may not highlight specific issues
Ideal for	Improving customer support, product usability, checkout flow	Measuring brand advocacy, customer retention, long-term growth strategies

When should you use CSAT vs NPS?

CSAT and NPS are powerful on their own, but they’re most effective when applied thoughtfully across the customer journey. Here’s how to decide which to use, and when.

When to use CSAT 

CSAT is ideal for identifying operational issues, tracking service quality and spotting trends in satisfaction over time. If your goal is to understand how well individual touchpoints perform, CSAT is the right tool.

You’ll typically use CSAT:

• After a purchase or checkout to measure how smooth the buying process was.
• After a customer service interaction to see if the issue was resolved effectively.
• Following a delivery or onboarding experience to check whether expectations were met.
• When launching a new feature or update to understand immediate reactions.

When to use NPS

NPS is best used at moments that reflect the whole experience a customer has had with your brand. That might include:

• After onboarding or a few weeks into using your product once the customer has formed an opinion.
• At key relationship milestones such as quarterly or annual check-ins.
• After major updates or campaigns to see how perception shifts.
• Before renewal or repurchase to gauge loyalty and predict churn.

Can you use CSAT and NPS together? (Hint: Yes!)

Absolutely! In fact, using CSAT and NPS together is one of the smartest ways to get a full picture of your customer experience. Each metric has its own strengths and relying on just one of these can leave blind spots. 

For example, high satisfaction in individual interactions (CSAT) doesn’t always translate into strong overall loyalty (NPS).

When used together, CSAT and NPS show the link between moment-to-moment satisfaction and longer-term loyalty. CSAT pinpoints how customers rate specific experiences, and NPS indicates whether those experiences are strong enough to create advocates.

Here’s a practical way to deploy both across the customer journey:

Onboarding and first purchase (Use CSAT)

Onboarding and first purchase flows are classic CSAT moments. Sending a short survey right after account setup, implementation or a first order helps you see whether the experience met expectations.

CSAT is widely recommended here because it captures satisfaction at a specific “moment of truth” in the journey.

Product or service usage (Use CSAT)

As customers start using your product in earnest, CSAT works well after meaningful in-product events such as completing a workflow, trying a new feature or reaching a usage milestone. 

The goal is to check whether the product continues to meet expectations in real situations, not just during onboarding. An added bonus is that in regularly surveying customers, you’ll likely spot usability issues early.

Support and service interactions (Use CSAT)

Support is where CSAT really shines. If you send it right after a ticket, chat or call, you get an honest read on how helpful and efficient the interaction felt. Because it captures feedback in the moment, it’s one of the quickest ways to spot service issues and improve quality.

Renewal, upgrade or churn decisions (Use NPS)

NPS is especially useful around major commercial moments such as renewal, expansion or churn. Asking the “likelihood to recommend” question before renewal or after a customer leaves helps you understand whether the overall relationship and perceived value support long-term retention.

It gives you a high-level read on loyalty that complements the more immediate insights you get from CSAT.

Quarterly check-ins (Use NPS)

NPS is designed to measure overall loyalty and likelihood to recommend, so it’s better suited to periodic “relationship” check-ins than to one-off interactions.

Most organisations send relational NPS surveys on a quarterly or bi-annual cadence to track long-term trends rather than day-to-day fluctuations. 

Blending both methods gives you moment-to-moment customer feedback to fix operational issues and a strategic view of loyalty that informs retention, product strategy and growth. 

Best practices to use CSAT and NPS scores effectively

CSAT and NPS give you numbers, but those numbers only matter if you use them wisely. Here, we explore best practices for interpreting, benchmarking and acting on these scores to make meaningful improvements across the customer journey.

1. Ask follow-up questions

A CSAT or NPS score tells you what your customers feel but not why. That’s where follow-up questions come in. Asking them to explain their rating provides critical qualitative insight, turning a number into actionable customer feedback. 

Open-text responses can reveal specific pain points, highlight successful interactions or uncover opportunities for improvement that scores alone can’t show.

Some effective open-ended questions include:

• “What could we have done to make your experience better?”
• “What did you enjoy most about this interaction?”
• “Why did you give us this score?”

2. Don’t forget about survey design

Good insights start with good survey design. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when designing surveys:

Use standardised question formats

Keep your questions consistent. For CSAT, ask something like: “How satisfied were you with [the product/support experience/etc.]?” For NPS, stick with the classic: “How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?”

Keep surveys short and to the point

Avoid overwhelming customers. For CSAT, one rating question plus an optional follow-up comment field is usually enough to get meaningful customer feedback without causing survey fatigue.

Stick to consistent scoring scales

CSAT should use a 1–5 scale (or 1–10 if that’s the norm for your organization), but it must be the same scale, such as a Likert scale, every time. NPS always uses a 0–10 scale. This is non-negotiable as it directly affects how the score is calculated.

3. Don’t be complacent with high scores

It’s tempting to celebrate high CSAT or NPS ratings and move on but satisfied customers aren’t always loyal. Passive respondents with NPS scores of 7–8 may be happy today but they’re not committed and could easily switch to competitors. 

Even top scorers may leave clues in open-ended responses about small frustrations or unmet expectations. Treating every score as a source of insight ensures you don’t miss opportunities to refine your experience. 

When you continuously analyze feedback, address minor issues and act on patterns, you turn high ratings into stronger relationships and long-lasting customer loyalty.

4. Benchmark performance and track progress over time

Context is everything when interpreting CSAT and NPS scores. A single number on its own can be misleading so it’s important to compare your results both internally and externally. 

Use industry benchmarks to understand how your brand ranks among competitors and identify areas where you might be leading or lagging. 

At the same time, it’s also important to track trends over time (monthly or quarterly) to detect subtle shifts in satisfaction or loyalty before they turn into bigger issues. Setting internal targets for CSAT and NPS gives your team clear goals to work toward.

How Attest can help you make the most of CSAT and NPS

CSAT and NPS each tell an important story about your customers: CSAT captures satisfaction with specific interactions, while Net Promoter Score measures loyalty and advocacy over time. 

When used together, along with thoughtfully designed surveys, follow-up questions and benchmarking, they give teams a full view of the customer experience and reveal where improvements will have the biggest impact.

Attest makes it easy to collect and act on NPS insights. The platform offers customizable NPS templates to help teams launch surveys quickly without starting from scratch. 

From there, Attest helps you dig deeper. You can explore how satisfaction and loyalty shift across different audiences, channels and time periods. Attest also supports a hybrid approach to research: You can survey your own customers and online panel respondents, then compare results side by side.

It’s also simple to build out your NPS question with extra quant and qual follow-ups. The platform streamlines the process, so you can create a complete customer satisfaction survey that captures both the score and the “why” behind it in minutes.

Everything comes together in real-time dashboards, flexible targeting and seamless audience access which makes it easier than ever to move from insight to action.