Enabling and using CSAT

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When you enable CSAT (customer satisfaction ratings), end users are prompted to rate the support they received by answering a brief survey indicating whether they were or were not satisfied.

CSAT surveys for Zendesk Support are sent via email one day after the ticket is set to solved. For Zendesk web, mobile, and social messaging, they are presented in the messaging interface immediately after the ticket is set to solved.

Note: CSAT for web and mobile messaging is available only to customers with Agent Workspace activated on a Zendesk Suite plan or on a Support Professional (or higher) plan plus a Chat Team (or higher) plan.

You can also enable satisfaction ratings for live chat interactions, though these are managed separately, through your Chat dashboard. See Measuring visitor satisfaction with chat ratings.

You must be an administrator to enable customer satisfaction ratings.

This article contains the following sections:

• Enabling customer satisfaction ratings
• About the CSAT business rules
• Using customer satisfaction rating placeholders in Support emails

For more information about CSAT and how it works in the Support and messaging channels, see the following articles:

• About CSAT (customer satisfaction ratings) in Zendesk Support
• About CSAT ratings in messaging
• Viewing your CSAT score and ratings
• How can I exclude specific tickets, users, or groups from customer satisfaction surveys?

Enabling customer satisfaction ratings

By default, customer satisfaction ratings are disabled. You must be an administrator to enable CSAT. If you have a Multibrand account, you must have a help center enabled for each ticket brand that will receive customer satisfaction ratings.

Once enabled:

• Zendesk Support sends your end users the customer satisfaction rating survey in an email 24 hours after the related ticket has been marked as Solved.

  A new automation called Request customer satisfaction rating (System Automation) and a view called Rated tickets from the last 7 days are created when you enable CSAT. Both can be modified as needed to suit your workflow. If you decide you no longer want to send users the CSAT email, you must manually disable the automation that was created.

• Zendesk messaging (if used in your account) sends your end users the survey in the messaging web or mobile interface immediately after the related ticket is marked as Solved.

  A new trigger called Request customer satisfaction rating (messaging) is created when you enable CSAT for web or mobile messaging, and a trigger called Request customer satisfaction rating (social messaging) is created when enabled for social messaging. If you do not want to offer CSAT surveys as part of a messaging conversation, you'll need to manually disable the trigger (see Disabling CSAT in messaging).

• If you have enabled ratings for live chats, the ratings captured through a live chat conversation will appear at the top of the related ticket. See Understanding how chat rating works with customer satisfaction ratings.

In Zendesk Support, you can also enable satisfaction reasons for surveys sent for tickets, which allow you to add a follow-up question to negative survey responses. For information, see Working with satisfaction reasons.

You can disable customer satisfaction ratings at any time. Deactivating CSAT via the End users > Satisfaction tab described below will automatically deactivate the default automation and triggers. However, if you have created a custom automation or trigger, you must manually deactivate it to disable the CSAT survey. See About the CSAT business rules.

Tip: Check out Andrew's community tip for enhancing your CSAT survey with Mr. Happy and Mr. Sad faces and Avi Warner's five tips for improving your CSAT ratings.

To enable customer satisfaction ratings

1. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Configuration > End users.
2. On the Satisfaction tab, click Allow customers to rate tickets.
3. Click Save tab at the bottom of the page.

For details about the automations and triggers created during enablement, see About the CSAT business rules.

To view your customer satisfaction ratings and score, see Viewing your Customer Satisfaction score and ratings.

About the CSAT business rules

When CSAT is enabled, business rules are created to send the surveys to your end users. In this section, we'll discuss the following:

• Understanding the CSAT automation for Support
• Understanding the CSAT trigger for web and mobile messaging
• Understanding the CSAT trigger for social messaging

Understanding the CSAT automation for Support

The customer satisfaction rating automation, Request customer satisfaction rating (System Automation), sends the survey request email 24 hours after a Zendesk Support ticket has been solved.

Note: Remember that the condition statement is Hours since solved is 24 not Hours since solved greater than 24. This means that when you first enable customer satisfaction rating, none of the tickets that have been solved for more than 24 hours will generate a survey email. You can change this of course.

Tip: You might consider changing the number of hours after solved that you send out surveys to get more responses. Check out this blog post about maximizing survey responses.

You'll notice that there's a Ticket Satisfaction condition as well. This condition has the following values:

• Unoffered means that the survey has not previously been sent
• Offered means that the survey has already been sent
• Bad is the requester's negative rating
• Bad with comment is the requester's negative rating with their comment
• Good is the requester's positive rating
• Good with comment is the requester's positive rating with their comment

The unoffered value is used here because we only want to send the survey for tickets that have not already been rated.

The automation actions send the survey request email to the requester.

The {{satisfaction.rating_section}} placeholder contains the rating question and answer links. You can modify the surrounding message as needed. And as always, a canceling action is used to complete the automation; ticket satisfaction is set to offered to requester.

This automation can be modified to exclude tickets using many different criteria. For example, you might not want surveys sent for tickets assigned to a certain group or from a certain organization or for tickets containing certain tags.

Understanding the CSAT trigger for web and mobile messaging

The CSAT collection trigger for web and mobile messaging channels is created when:

• Messaging is enabled
• CSAT is enabled

This trigger, Request customer satisfaction rating (messaging), fires immediately after the related ticket has been marked as Solved, and presents the survey request to the end user in the messaging interface.

The survey sent by this trigger includes a rating component with Good and Bad options, as well as a comment component that is only displayed if the end user selects a rating option. These components can be ignored by the end user, if they do not wish to participate in the survey.

Below is an example of the web and mobile messaging trigger:

Understanding the CSAT trigger for social messaging

The CSAT collection trigger for social messaging is created when:

• Social messaging is enabled
• CSAT is enabled

The trigger, Request customer satisfaction rating (social messaging), fires immediately after the related ticket has been marked as Solved, and presents the survey request to the end user in the messaging interface.

For social messaging, When the criteria above is met, CSAT is enabled for the following social channels that have been added to your account:

• WhatsApp
• Facebook Messenger
• WeChat
• LINE
• X (formerly Twitter) Direct Message

These channels are included as trigger conditions whether they are enabled in your account or not. The trigger will ignore the condition for any of the above channels that are not enabled.

Note: If your account includes other social messaging channels not listed above, or if other social messaging channels are added to your account after CSAT is enabled, you will need to add those channels as conditions in the trigger for a CSAT survey to be sent. See Editing and cloning triggers for information on updating triggers.

The survey sent by this trigger includes a rating component with Good and Bad options, which can be ignored by the end user if they do not wish to participate in the survey.

Below is an example of the CSAT trigger for social messaging:

Using customer satisfaction rating placeholders in Support emails

Note: Currently, CSAT surveys in Zendesk messaging cannot use placeholders. See About CSAT in Zendesk messaging for information on this and other limitations.

Placeholders are best used in triggers and automations. Inserting them into a macro or comment creates a plain text version of the CSAT request, which permits other users to submit a satisfaction score for the requester and requires end users to click the URL and sign in to your help center to complete the survey. Additionally, if you insert the {{satisfaction.positive_rating_url}} or {{satisfaction.negative_rating_url}} into a comment, it can take up to 45 minutes for the rating to be updated in the ticket.

Aside from the placeholder mentioned above, {{satisfaction.rating_section}}, the customer satisfaction rating feature adds four other related placeholders. All of these placeholders can be used in various ways and are described in the following table.

Table 1. Customer satisfaction rating placeholders

Placeholder	Description
{{satisfaction.rating_section}}	A formatted block of text prompting the user to rate satisfaction.
{{satisfaction.current_rating}}	The text value of the current satisfaction rating, either Good or Bad.
{{satisfaction.positive_rating_url}}	A URL to rate the support positively.
{{satisfaction.negative_rating_url}}	A URL to rate the support negatively.
{{satisfaction.rating_url}}	A URL to rate the support (positive or negative are not pre-selected).
{{satisfaction.current_comment}}	The comment that the user added when rating the ticket.