In light of recent events, CSAT scores are understandably dipping<\/a> for teams across the globe. Support leaders shouldn’t immediately press the panic button though.<\/p>\n Letting your customers be the sole judges of what you do neglects your own values and expectations for your support team\u2019s performance. Especially now, with many companies dealing with high support volumes and distressed customers, looking at CSAT alone can quickly lead your team off course.<\/p>\n Successful support teams combine CSAT with another metric, Internal Quality (IQS), to get the fuller picture of their operations.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s explore the shortcomings of CSAT, analyze how IQS can complement it, and see how to get a complete overview of what is really happening in your support interactions.<\/p>\n CSAT can be a great customer service metric that helps you keep up with your customers\u2019 expectations. However, more and more support leaders are beginning to understand that CSAT gives only half of the picture and doesn\u2019t always necessarily reflect your support quality.<\/p>\n \u201cCSAT gives only half of the picture and doesn\u2019t always necessarily reflect your support quality\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At this stressful time where many support teams are handling emotional customers and having tough conversations, it\u2019s even more apparent that CSAT doesn\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s why CSAT is not enough to draw any finite conclusions on customer service performance:<\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to pin down the exact cause for a negative rating by just looking at the score you received.<\/p>\n For example, if you analyze your support team\u2019s performance based on CSAT, then a single customer\u2019s negative feedback on prolonged response times could easily mislead you. Many companies have experienced an increase in their support volumes<\/a> since the world suddenly shifted to remote work. In this case, CSAT probably didn\u2019t reflect how (well) your agents handled the situation but reflected the customer\u2019s dissatisfaction with having to wait in the queue.<\/p>\n Because customers don’t see the whole picture, they may be disappointed about something that was impossible for your team to achieve in the first place.<\/p>\n Not all issues can be solved immediately and some of your users\u2019 requests can never be solved by your team at all. Customers don\u2019t know your product roadmap and internal processes, so bear in mind that some of the negative feedback could be directed at something your team had no control over.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause customers don’t see the whole picture, they may be disappointed about something that was impossible for your team to achieve in the first place\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At times, your users might leave positive feedback on support interactions that weren\u2019t actually up to par based on your internal criteria. Other times, your agents will receive negative feedback on things that were out of their control (e.g. issues with the product) though they handled the cases flawlessly.<\/p>\n Every company and customer service team has its own set of goals and standards which might differ from a particular customer\u2019s idea of excellent customer care. So, CSAT is often a reflection of how your standards and performance align with what your customers believe is right, not you.<\/p>\n CSAT does not give answers to everything related to the quality of your customer experience. It\u2019s a great indicator of your users\u2019 attitudes towards what you do but in order to make the most out of this feedback, you need to combine that with Internal Quality Score (IQS).<\/p>\n Internal Quality Score<\/a> is the metric of conversation reviews<\/a> – internal support interaction evaluations that teams conduct to secure a high level of support quality. IQS tells you how well your agents\u2019 responses align with your internal quality standards. IQS expresses how well your agents met your internal quality standards as a percentage of the maximum score of 100%.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to measure and track IQS:<\/p>\n If you conduct regular conversation reviews, you\u2019ll be able to track your Internal Quality Score over time.<\/p>\n Note that the best part about tracking IQS is that you\u2019ll notice any changes in your support quality as soon as they happen. You\u2019ll be able to correct the course before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n IQS balances your customers\u2019 feedback with your own perspective and helps you understand whether customers\u2019 expectations align with your company goals. At times, you might realize that you need to take your CSAT results with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n Other times, you\u2019ll get valuable insight into why some of your conversations ended with negative reviews. Most importantly, you\u2019ll learn how you can improve and avoid making the same mistakes again in the future.<\/p>\n For example, Automattic, the makers of WordPress.com and WooCommerce, continuously deliver CSAT of 95% and more. Yet, 56.6% of their support interactions<\/a> fall under the \u201cRoom for Improvement\u201d category in conversation reviews.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to pair your CSAT up with IQS for a successful support quality program:<\/p>\n 1. Analyze all the conversations rated by your customers.<\/strong><\/p>\n Most teams receive external feedback to a relatively small proportion of their support interactions. The ones that do get scored are usually those that were handled either amazingly well or really bad (according to your customers).<\/p>\n To make the most out of your CSAT in terms of support quality, always review:<\/p>\n 2. Review a random sample of your support interactions.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you focus only on the conversations rated by your customers, you\u2019ll neglect a large part of your support volume that never receives any feedback from your customers. Pick random conversations for review to get a broader overview of your team\u2019s performance. Also, giving regular feedback is crucial for your support agents\u2019 professional growth and motivation. \u201cThat\u2019s fine, continue\u201d is great feedback that often goes unsaid.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you focus only on the conversations rated by your customers, you\u2019ll neglect a large part of your support volume that never receives any feedback\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 3. Compare your CSAT and IQS trends.<\/strong><\/p>\n Just like with every other business metric, the real value of tracking CSAT and IQS becomes clear if you track them over time. Moreover, if you compare the graphs of those two quality KPIs, you\u2019ll immediately notice when something goes haywire. For example, if you see a sudden drop in CSAT while IQS remains high, it might indicate that other areas besides support are dragging customer satisfaction down. Investigate the latest changes you\u2019ve made to your product or other business activities that might have caused the dissatisfaction, fix it, and see how CSAT and IQS continue to grow hand-in-hand.<\/p>\n IQS is a great customer service metric that helps to balance your customers\u2019 subjective point of view. To unveil the full potential of your customer feedback, you need to combine it with internal reviews that help you make sense of this data and learn from it.<\/p>\n Sending out customer surveys and going through support interactions might sound like a real hassle – and it probably will be if you decide to do it manually. Luckily, there are excellent tools out there that will help you collect, analyze, and report CSAT and IQS.<\/p>\n To start tracking CSAT and IQS on Intercom:<\/p>\n With a conversation review tool like Klaus, you can track your Internal Quality Score over time.<\/p><\/div>\n CSAT and IQS are a match made in heaven. Without either of them, your customer service feedback will be too biased either towards your users\u2019 expectations or your own standards that might not match those of your customers.<\/p>\n Keeping an eye on both internal and external quality metrics gives you a precise overview of how your team is doing and helps you pinpoint the areas in which you need to improve.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CSAT is by far the most popular customer service quality metric used across all industries. But CSAT alone is actually a poor indicator of support quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":444,"featured_media":23600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"category":[3],"tags":[142],"coauthors":[22528],"class_list":["post-23598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-support","tag-customer-support"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy CSAT is not enough<\/h2>\n
1. CSAT is a mixture of product, support, and other feedback<\/h3>\n
2. Customers don\u2019t see the complex processes behind their requests<\/h3>\n
3. Customers don\u2019t know your quality standards<\/h3>\n
What\u2019s Internal Quality Score (IQS)?<\/h2>\n
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How to balance CSAT with IQS<\/h2>\n
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How to track CSAT and IQS on Intercom<\/h2>\n
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![\"With](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Klaus-app.png\")
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