NPS vs CSAT vs CES: Which Customer Score a Small Business Should Use

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Three scores, three questions

NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks how likely the customer is to recommend you to a friend or colleague, on a 0 to 10 scale. It is about the whole relationship. Bain's Net Promoter System site defines the score as the percentage of promoters (9 or 10) minus the percentage of detractors (0 to 6), so it runs from −100 to +100.

CSAT (customer satisfaction score) asks how satisfied the customer was, usually with one specific experience, on a scale such as 1 to 5. Qualtrics' CSAT guide gives the usual calculation: the number of customers who answered 4 (satisfied) or 5 (very satisfied), divided by the number of responses, times 100.

CES (customer effort score) asks how easy it was to get something done, usually as agreement with a short statement about a task, such as "It was easy to book with us". It grew out of research published in Harvard Business Review in 2010, Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers, which argued that reducing the effort customers have to make does more for loyalty than going above and beyond.

Which one answers your question

Start from what you will do with the answers, not from the score.

• "Are customers happy enough with us to send friends our way, and is that getting better?" That is NPS. Send it once per job or per quarter for regular customers, a week or two after the work, when they have had time to live with it.
• "Did this particular visit, delivery or call go well?" That is CSAT. Send it straight after the interaction, while it is fresh, and name the interaction in the question.
• "Is booking, paying or getting help from us easy?" That is CES. Ask it right after a task the customer did themselves, such as booking online or sorting out a problem.

Qualtrics sums up the split in similar terms: CSAT measures satisfaction with a product or service, NPS measures loyalty to the organisation, and CES measures how easy or difficult a task was.

For most small service businesses, one score is plenty, and NPS is the usual choice because it covers the whole relationship and the referrals that small businesses live on. Add CSAT only if there is one interaction you are actively trying to fix.

Worked examples

NPS. 20 customers answer: 11 give 9 or 10, 5 give 7 or 8, 4 give 0 to 6. NPS = 55% − 20% = +35. You can check it in the free NPS calculator by typing 11, 5 and 4.

CSAT. 40 customers rate their visit from 1 to 5: eighteen 5s, twelve 4s, six 3s, three 2s and one 1. CSAT = (18 + 12) ÷ 40 = 75%.

CES. 30 customers respond to "Booking with us was easy" on a seven-point agree to disagree scale; 24 choose one of the three "agree" options. CES = 24 ÷ 30 = 80% agree. Some businesses report the average score instead; whichever you use, use it every time.

Notice that the three numbers are not on the same scale and cannot be compared with each other. A CSAT of 75% and an NPS of +35 are not "better" or "worse" than one another. Each is only comparable with itself, asked the same way, round after round; our guide to judging an NPS score explains how to read that trend.

What a low score of each kind points to

Each score narrows down where to look when it is low.

• A low NPS with decent CSAT: individual visits go fine, but something about the overall relationship does not make people want to recommend you, such as price, availability or how hard you are to reach between jobs. Read the reasons for the theme.
• A low CSAT for one interaction: a specific step is going wrong: the arrival window, the clean-up, the way the bill is explained. It is the most fixable kind of low score because it points at one moment.
• A low CES: something customers do themselves is harder than it should be: booking, paying, finding information, getting a reply. These are often process fixes, such as an online booking page or a clearer invoice, rather than service fixes.

Step by step: run one well

1. Name the decision

Write down what you will change if the score is low. If you cannot name anything, you do not need the survey yet.

2. Pick the score that matches

Relationship and referrals: NPS. One interaction: CSAT. A task the customer does: CES.

3. Use a ready template

The free form builder has an NPS survey template (the 0 to 10 question, the reason, and a follow-up that only detractors see) and a customer satisfaction template (a 5-star overall rating, a quality grid and open questions). Its Summary tab works out the NPS for a 0 to 10 question and shows the spread of star ratings, from which CSAT is the share of 4s and 5s.

4. Ask one score per survey

Do not stack all three in one form. Each extra rating question makes the survey longer, and three near-identical rating questions in a row are more likely to get three quick clicks than one considered answer. One score plus "What's the main reason for your score?" is enough.

5. Calculate and act on the reasons

Work the score out the standard way, record the number of responses, and read every reason from the unhappy end. On paid plans, Fynl shows a survey answer given with an email address in that person's lead panel, next to their bookings, quotes and invoices, so the follow-up call has the full history in front of you.

The NPS calculator sits with the lifetime value calculator, the form builder and the other no-cost tools on our free tools page.

Questions people also ask

Sources

• Net Promoter System (Bain & Company) — Measuring your Net Promoter Score
• Qualtrics — What is CSAT and how do you measure it?
• Harvard Business Review — Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers (Dixon, Freeman and Toman, 2010)