Customer satisfaction survey template

A satisfaction survey is not a research project. It is one number you can watch week to week, plus enough context to know what moved it. Six questions sent the day something happened beat a twenty-question study sent once a quarter.

CSAT, NPS and CES are not interchangeable

CSAT is the score this template produces: how satisfied someone was with one interaction, on a 1 to 5 star rating, asked right after it. Your CSAT is the share of people who picked 4 or 5, written as a percentage. NPS asks something else (how likely you are to recommend us, 0 to 10) and measures the relationship rather than the moment, which is why it belongs on a cycle; the NPS survey template covers that one. CES measures effort, and question 4 here is the CES-shaped question. Start with CSAT: it is the cheapest to send, the fastest to read, and it attaches to something your team already does daily. Customer feedback covers running all three together.

Send it while the memory is still sharp

Trigger the send on the interaction, not on a date in the calendar. Within 24 hours of a delivered order, a closed ticket or a finished onboarding call, people can still tell you what actually happened; a week later they rate a general mood instead. Put the link at the end of the message that already goes out, and send once per interaction, with no reminders.

Why the branch beats one "any comments?" box

Most satisfaction surveys end with a neutral open box, and it collects almost nothing. Ask someone who gave five stars what went wrong and they skip it. Ask someone who gave two what went well and you sound like you were not listening. One box has to be worded so blandly that neither of them has a reason to type.

So the template splits it. Four or five stars gets "What worked best for you?", a question about a good thing, which people answer in a sentence and which tells the team what to keep doing. Three or below gets "What let you down?", which is permission to be specific, asked at the one moment someone is still annoyed enough to be precise. Nobody sees both, so the survey is a question shorter for everyone and the written answers are about something.

Ask what you can act on, then stop

Questions 4 and 5 are one tap each, and they sort the responses table into piles you can work with: people who struggled to get help, people who will not come back. Question 6 is optional on purpose: a relief valve most people skip, and a blank there means nothing. Six steps, under a minute, and every question past that costs you completions. Survey questions has wording you can copy for the ones you add.

Close the loop on the thank-you screen

Say what happens next in one sentence: that a person reads every low score, or that you reply within a day. It is the only screen where you get to speak rather than ask, and it decides whether the whole thing felt like a form or like a conversation.