Taking CSAT Surveys to the Next Level: Cater to the Modern App User

Mapping out every step of the customer’s journey doesn’t stop once the customer signs on the dotted line and finishes paying for your product or service. The post-purchase stages of the customer’s journey matter just as much as all the steps it took to convert them.

Creating a positive customer experience through all of their interactions with your platform is the only way to retain their business, get useful feedback, and secure referrals through them. HubSpot’s guide to customer acquisition costs makes the benefits of good service clear:

“Happy customers want to support the businesses they love. 90% of consumers are more likely to purchase more, and 93% were more likely to be repeat customers at companies with excellent customer service.”

Traditionally, customer service surveys played an important role in gathering feedback and gaining critical insight into positive aspects and pain points of your customers’ experiences. However, many of the tools used to conduct CSAT surveys are clunky and outdated.

They interrupt the user experience and draw them out of your app, potentially preventing them from providing feedback. See how you can improve traditional CSAT surveys and better reach the modern app user to gain useful feedback and foster better user relationships.

The Importance of CSAT Surveys

Customer feedback surveys ask questions to garner quantifiable feedback that app developers can use to serve as the foundation for upgrades to their applications. While having some baseline to measure customer satisfaction at regular points of interaction is essential, every survey has advantages and limitations that make them a good fit for only certain points of the customer journey.

The most appropriate use cases for CSAT surveys when your organization provides services through a customer-facing app can be split into these two spans of time: early stages of your app and when it’s already been adopted by users.

Early-Stage Apps

When you’re still developing your app, customer feedback is essential. Even more, this is when it’s most useful. You can utilize feedback and suggestions from the beta testing phase to improve your app before releasing it to the greater public. As you continue to build, the platform more closely aligns with customers’ needs and provides the unique user experiences necessary to make your users more likely to stick with your organization and even refer others your way.

At this point, CSAT surveys can help you uncover everything from glaring issues to small inconveniences that might not be visible to your development team.

Established Apps

Once your app has been developed, that doesn’t mean the window of time when you can meaningfully make changes based on customer feedback has passed. Instead of focusing on major changes and patches, now is the time to look at how you can support users’ journey during every action they take with your app. At this point, negative feedback can help you:

Clarify instructions and wording
Create self-support resources to help users resolve increasingly specific issues through step-by-step instructions
Release patches and upgrades that address recurring issues
Proactively provide support for complex functionalities

When customers can see you’re incorporating their feedback, that also secures their loyalty and is more likely to convert them to lifelong users. Asking for feedback, substantively using feedback, and catering to modern users’ needs all show users that you’re interested in building a long-term relationship that benefits everyone.

Why Traditional Feedback Methods Aren’t Enough

As beneficial as customer feedback is, the tools you’re using to get it can also worsen the user experience. A disruptive popup asking for feedback and opinions destroys the flow of a user’s interactions with your app and can be jarring at a crucial moment. If your app redirects users to a webpage or another tab, that’s even more disruptive. Users might fill out the survey, but then they might get distracted and not return to your app.

The disjointed communication colors the feedback users provide, worsens their experience, and doesn’t always meet the user’s needs or give them the best format for communicating their feedback. In the pursuit of improving the user experience, traditional CSAT surveys often fail.

Just as importantly, it can create confusing results for your data science team and customer service strategists. Users will give different feedback at different times, may give the answers that shorten the survey rather than give real insight, and don’t necessarily consider the context of the feedback. This can leave your key decision-makers guessing about what strategies to implement based on flawed data.

Meet Your Users Where They Are

Replace your traditional CSAT survey methods with experiences designed to align with modern users’ needs. First, make sure all of your CSAT survey questions fit seamlessly into the app itself. At a minimum, never direct users away from your app or their current page.

You can improve the experience even more by tailoring the questions to the user’s current situation. Ask questions that are relevant, don’t let them dominate the screen, and get your survey out of the way quickly. This way, you collect more specific feedback centered around specific types of interactions and contexts. As a result, each piece of feedback is more clear and actionable.

Keep the CSAT, but switch to in-app feedback bots. Users will appreciate the personalization and convenience, and your team will appreciate the relevance.

Cater to Your Audience With Helpshift

At Helpshift, we specialize in modernizing feedback and customer support processes so they better meet the needs and behaviors of in-app users. If you want to update your CSAT survey methods and get more actionable insights on how to retain customers and grow your customer base, learn more about our in-app survey tools.