How to take Zendesk CSAT to the next level by combining CSAT Viewer and Child Tickets

We recently launched our CSAT Viewer on the Zendesk Marketplace. This app unlocks the hidden context of Zendesk’s new customizable CSAT and gives agent a complete view on a customers’ rating, reasons and feedback right next to a ticket, filling a gap in Zendesk’s current product.

Asking for feedback is one thing, making sure your agents can see the feedback is another. Most companies we worked with consider sending CSAT surveys as essential and will share their scores with their management. But very few of them have a decent process in place on how to deal with the answers received.

Asking customers whether they are satisfied with the service or product provided is just the beginning. But what do you do when you get a response?

A Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a simple question for the customer: Are you satisfied with our service? The most straightforward answer can be a “yes” or a “no”. Originally, Zendesk had a thumbs-up or thumbs-down option to indicate customer satisfaction. Recently, this has been expanded to a 3-step score (poor > neutral > good) or a 5-step score (very poor > poor > neutral > good > very good).

In addition, when the customer is negative or neutral, the customer can pick a reason from a customizable dropdown list. When creating this list, use generic options such as:

Unfriendly service
Issue did not get solved
Feedback unclear or inaccurate
Ticket took too long to get solved

Make it a short list. Do not expect your customer to scroll through a lot of different options.

Furthermore, the customer can also provide feedback in a free text field. This feedback is essential when dealing with CSAT.

Positive feedback - More than just a compliment

Always thank a customer who makes the effort to give you a positive score. This can be done with an automated response.
However, if a customer makes the effort to give textual feedback, send him or her a personal response. Examples like “Thank you, we will pass this on to Caroline” or “Our delivery service will be pleased with your compliment.” will make a huge difference.

If you're concerned this might be too time-consuming, you might be sending out too many customer surveys. Consider not sending a CSAT for every resolved ticket. In an environment where the same customers regularly create tickets, a 1 in 4 ratio often works better.

Negative feedback - Work to be done

Negative feedback should primarily be seen as an opportunity to learn and to grow and to improve as a company. This should be the foremost consideration. Frequently, the agent is blamed for the negative feedback. However, the agent is only one part of the company, where every department, employee, and the company culture play a role.

“Use negative feedback to grow. Not to punish ”

So, what to do with that negative feedback? Ideally you form a team of experienced and empathetic agents. Let them contact the dissatisfied customers. Use the customer’s preferred channel to respond. If the customer submitted a ticket via email, calling them out of the blue can be too invasive. For very dissatisfied or irate customers, it’s best to first email them and ask for approval to reach out to them. Try not to further aggravate an already unhappy customer.

“A customer that is dissatisfied doesn’t mean they are right to feel so. Sometimes customers have incorrect expectations or can be unreasonable.”

What does the ideal CSAT flow look like?

When CSAT has been activated in Zendesk, it’s most likely the following logic has been applied:

Tickets from dissatisfied customers are reopened
Tickets from satisfied customers get closed

This is very straight forward, but perhaps not the best approach. Let’s go for better!

Let’s set up an improved CSAT

1 - Use the updated CSAT in Zendesk and opt for a 5-step scale.

CSAT without feedback:

Very Satisfied -> Ticket remains solved + automated thank you + request for testimony
Satisfied -> Ticket remains solved + automated thank you
Neutral -> Ticket remains solved + automated response
Dissatisfied -> Ticket remains solved + automated response asking if we can change their negative experience
Very Dissatisfied -> Ticket remains solved + automated response asking if we can change their negative experience

CSAT with feedback:

Very Satisfied -> manual thank you + request for testimony
Satisfied -> manual thank you
Neutral -> analyze ticket + action
Dissatisfied -> analyze ticket + action or request to contact
Very Dissatisfied -> analyze ticket + action or request to contact

With this setup, only CSATs with feedback will get worked upon. All tickets with textual feedback will require manual processing. For these tickets, it is crucial to check the feedback from the client to understand the context. Therefore the CSAT Viewer is essential!

For very positive feedback > thank your customer with a personal message and invite them for a testimony (in alignment with marketing or sales).
For positive feedback > thank your customer with a personal message
For neutral, negative and very negative feedback > ensure that you read the ticket, analyze it, and then take the necessary corrective actions.

Now, let's take it a step further.

Discover CSAT Viewer

2 - Set up the right team

Create a new group (example - Satisfaction Squad) and add your most empathetic agents to it. These agents should have an engaging way of communicating.

Since you want to make sure that the resolution time of the original tickets are not affected, you can make use of other flows to make sure someone picks up the feedback and assists the customer. One of the options you can use are Child Tickets. This will create a new tickets, linked to the original ticket, and can be assigned to another group in Zendesk. (See this support article for more info on Child Tickets

Now you can automate this process by leveraging triggers. Add a new trigger that “creates a child-ticket and assigns it to the Satisfaction Squad, once a CSAT with feedback has been received”. The main ticket will remain in status solved and will no longer be actionable for the agent that last dealt with it.

Next, create a new form (CSAT Form) where additional fields (drop downs) should be added, allowing the team to categorise these tickets professionally. A Cause Code and a Resolution Code will for sure make sense. Next trigger to make is “If group changed into Satisfaction Squad -> use the CSAT Form. Ensure these child tickets are available to the Satisfaction Squad in a view or are assigned to them via omnichannel routing.

You might want to give separate SLA’s to these Child tickets. First create the SLA. Note that tickets of unsatisfied users should be handled with priority. Now, create an additional trigger: If Group | is | Satisfaction Squad, then apply the CSAT SLA

Upon analysis, the CSAT team can decide to:

Send a personal note to the happy customers and share this with the corresponding team, agent, manager,…
Reply (or reach out) to the unsatisfied customers in case intervention is needed, deal with the issue and hopefully end with a happy client
Decide not to act, document via internal note, if the negative feedback is not funded, out of scope,…
Simultaneously, the original ticket remains in the name of the original team and agent. This keeps the reporting accurate and allows you to measure all efforts in handling the CSAT (filter: Form = CSAT). You might consider giving higher priority to negative CSATs; a satisfied customer has more patience.

Once the child ticket has been handled, the Satisfaction Squad will put it in solved.

What are the advantages?

Agents having to deal with their own tickets for which they receieved negative feedback, can be hurting, demotivating
Your best agents dealing with these sensitive tickets.
Losing clients because they haven’t been listened to, has a big financial and reputational impact
The original tickets remain under the agents and correspondings team name
You can easily split up the actual ticket handling versus the handling of the CSAT’s
Efforts to deal with CSAt’s can be measured, time spend can be calculated

Taking Zendesk CSAT to the next level.