What is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey?
A CSAT survey is a key metric that measures how happy your customers are with a particular interaction, product or service. Surveys placed at strategic touchpoints, for example, after a purchase or support interaction, help you to track how your brand is doing, and where you could do better.
For merchants using Grapevine Surveys, CSAT gives you the chance to ask your customers one simple question like:
"How satisfied were you with your experience (or purchase) today?"
Because that feedback is fresh, it’s one of the best ways to spot issues early and build stronger relationships with your customers.
Why CSAT Matters for Shopify Merchants
By collecting CSAT feedback, Shopify merchants can quickly understand how satisfied customers are with their products, service and overall shopping experience. CSAT data can then be used to:
Spot immediate issues: A low CSAT after a purchase or support chat is a clear signal that something went wrong. Spot ways to improve customer support interactions, whether that’s response time, tone, or clarity.
Drive loyalty & repeat business: Happier customers are more likely to return, buy again and recommend you. Encourage repeat purchases by proactively addressing any issues customers mention.
Close the loop: With Grapevine Surveys, you can follow up quickly on low scores (i.e., automate a workflow or tag a customer for personal outreach).
Team visibility: When your support or fulfilment teams see CSAT trends, you can identify training or process bottlenecks to create more consistent, positive experiences.
Product Offerings: introduce new products. refine existing product descriptions and messaging to better match customer expectations.
Increase Average Order Value: Uncover opportunities to cross-sell or upsell based on what happy customers are looking for next.
Our CSAT survey question
Our CSAT formula is based on a 5 point Likert scale, a rating system to measure customer expectations, attitudes, behaviours, and opinions.
The highest score (5) indicates that customers are “very satisfied”, whilst the lowest score (1) indicates that customers are “very dissatisfied”:
Response | 5-point scoring |
Very satisfied | 5 |
Satisfied | 4 |
Neutral | 3 |
Dissatisfied | 2 |
Very dissatisfied | 1 |
You can either use our text labels to display the survey response options:
Or you can use our smiley face icons:
Setting up your CSAT question
You can either create a brand new survey for your CSAT question, or add it in to an existing survey.
When creating a new Survey, you'll see the CSAT question type in the left hand pane of the survey editor:
Enter your question, remembering to keep it very simple and specific to the area of the business you are looking to gauge customer satisfaction with:
To change the CSAT survey from displaying the response options as text labels to smiley faces, select the Icons option from the Scale display type dropdown menu:
You'll then see the preview pain update within the survey editor to show the smiley face options:
Settings
Required - If you have multiple questions in your survey, you may wish to make some questions optional. Enable the Required setting to make an answer to this question mandatory before the respondent can progress onto the next question or Submit the survey.
Tag orders / Tag customers - A customer tag or order tag can be applied that represents the CSAT score provided by the survey respondent:
To read more about Grapevine Surveys tagging features, please see the following article: Use tags to identify survey responses
How is my CSAT score calculated?
To calculate your overall CSAT score we add the number of customers who responded with a 4 ("Satisfied") or 5 ("Very Satisfied") and divide that by the total number of survey responses. The result is then multiplied by 100 to get the percentage of satisfied customers.
Example
If 225 out of 300 survey respondents rate their satisfaction as a 4 or 5.
Calculation: (225/300)×100
Result: The CSAT score is 75%
Many businesses consider a CSAT between 75-85% as “good”, and anything over 90% as “excellent”.
Advantages & Limitations of CSAT
Pros:
Quick and easy to deploy (often just one question)
High response rates, especially when sent right after an interaction
Gives you actionable insight into specific touchpoints
Cons:
It captures how satisfied customers felt, but not why — you may need to add an open-ended question to the survey to ask why a particular score was given.
Results may be skewed by response bias (e.g., only very happy or unhappy customers respond).
CSAT measures satisfaction, but not necessarily loyalty or advocacy — for that you might also wish to track metrics like NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Need any help?
If you have any questions about the content of this article or any other Grapevine Surveys related question, then please do just get in touch.