A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is the percentage of surveyed customers who rate a specific interaction, usually a completed service call, as satisfying. It measures how one job went, not how loyal the customer is overall.
How CSAT is measured
You ask one question after the job, such as "How satisfied were you with today's visit?" on a 1 to 5 scale. Only the top two answers count as satisfied.
CSAT = Responses of 4 or 5 ÷ Total responses × 100
Say you send a survey after 400 jobs in a month and 120 customers answer. If 96 of them pick 4 or 5, your CSAT is 96 ÷ 120 × 100 = 80%. Note what the number leaves out: the 280 customers who did not answer. Track the response rate next to the score.
Response rate = Responses ÷ Surveys sent × 100
Why it matters
CSAT is a short-loop signal. A drop shows up within days, and because it is tied to individual jobs you can trace it back to a technician, a job type or a day of the week.
Read the low scores and you usually find the cause is not the repair itself. It is the wait, the missed arrival window, the second visit because a part was missing, or nobody calling to say the truck was running late. That makes CSAT partly a scheduling metric. Compare it against your on-time arrival rate and first-time fix rate by week. If all three move together, the fix is upstream of the technician.
Late arrivals are often a planning problem: a slot was offered that the truck could not physically reach in time. Checking the drive from the previous job before a slot is offered is one way to remove that cause, and it is what CrewLink's travel-time scheduling does. CrewLink does not run customer surveys; you would collect CSAT with a separate tool or by phone.
A common mistake
Treating CSAT as a technician score. A technician who keeps getting the last call of the day, after two overrunning jobs, will collect more "arrived late" complaints regardless of how well they work. Before you use CSAT in reviews, split it by the cause customers give, not just by the name on the ticket. The practice side of follow-up is covered in the field service customer communication guide.
Related terms
- Net promoter score measures willingness to recommend, a longer-term loyalty signal.
- Callback rate catches jobs that looked satisfying on the day but failed later.
- Response time is often what a low score is really about.
Common questions
What is a good CSAT score in field service?
There is no universal benchmark worth quoting, because survey wording, scale and response rate vary so much. Compare your score against your own past months and between your own crews.
When should you send a CSAT survey?
Soon after the job closes, while the visit is fresh. A survey sent a week later mostly measures the invoice.
What is the difference between CSAT and NPS?
CSAT asks about one interaction. NPS asks whether the customer would recommend you, which reflects the whole relationship. Use CSAT to find job-level problems and NPS to watch loyalty over time.