Master Zendesk CSAT Surveys: Measure, Analyze, and Improve Your Customer Experience

Posted by Kvitoslava Martsynyshyn

November 18, 2025

70% of customers choose brands based on the promise of a great experience, according to Ipsos, a leading market research company. Are you living up to the promise customers expect? Your CSAT (customer satisfaction score) measures exactly that — how happy your customers are with your service.
Whether you’re already using Zendesk for customer support or considering it, this guide covers everything you need to know about Zendesk CSAT ratings and the main alternatives.

What Is Zendesk CSAT, and How Does It Work?

Customers use the survey to rate their experience on a simple scale (e.g., 1–5), where the lowest score means poor service and the highest means excellent service. If someone leaves a negative rating, they can choose a reason for their dissatisfaction and add a comment to explain what went wrong.
For email tickets, Zendesk sends a CSAT survey one day after the ticket status changes to Solved. In web, mobile, and social messaging, the survey appears right in the chat window as soon as the issue is marked Resolved. If the request was handled through a customer portal, users can go to the Requests page after their ticket is solved to leave feedback. By default, customers are asked to respond to the survey within 28 days, regardless of the channel.
Zendesk also lets you adjust the CSAT setup, including the questions, scale, and rating labels.

Why CSAT Matters for Support Teams

Because CSAT surveys are short and easy to complete, they tend to get more responses, giving you important insights. Use them when you want to measure short-term satisfaction and discover how you could improve customer service.

How to Set Up Zendesk CSAT Surveys

By default, CSAT surveys are turned off in Zendesk. Only admins can enable and configure them. Before you start, check that legacy Zendesk CSAT surveys are disabled.

As of October 2025, here’s how to set up a CSAT survey:

1. In Admin Center, go to Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Customer satisfaction.
2. Click Get started.
3. Select Edit survey.
4. Under Rating scale, set up the following options:

• Headline: The text customers see when asked to rate their experience.
• Scale range: Choose the range of your rating scale: 1–2, 1–3, or 1–5.
• Scale type: Choose numerical, emoji, or custom text.
• Scale: Depending on your chosen type, add the numbers, emojis, or text for each rating.
• Label: Optional explanations for what each item on the scale means.

5. (Optional) Add an open-ended question to gather more details from unhappy customers.
6. (Optional) Include a drop-down menu with preset reasons for negative ratings.
7. Click Save and Back.
8. Under Channels, select Activate for the channel(s) where you want to enable the survey.
9. For email surveys, open the automation rule that sends CSAT survey requests, make any needed edits, and click Activate rule.

That’s it — your Zendesk CSAT survey is ready to go.

If you’d like to include the survey in your customer portal, follow these instructions.

How to Measure and Calculate a CSAT in Zendesk

You can view the overall satisfaction score and related metrics right on the Zendesk Support dashboard. To see feedback for a specific case, open the ticket in the agent workspace. Agents can also track their own CSAT performance, making it easy to stay on top of customer feedback.

Of course, merely setting up surveys and measuring CSAT doesn’t necessarily mean a good CSAT.

Best Practices to Improve Zendesk CSAT

High CSAT ratings don’t just happen. They’re driven by consistent attention to detail and a customer-first mindset. A few simple tweaks in timing, tone, and process can make a big difference. Here’s how to get the most out of your Zendesk CSAT surveys:

Time your surveys correctly

Keep it simple

Personalize follow-up

Analyze feedback regularly

Close the feedback loop

Train and empower agents

Sometimes, improving your CSAT is as simple as upgrading the tool you use to collect feedback. A more advanced survey app can uncover deeper insights and raise your response rate.

Built-in Zendesk CSAT vs. External Tools: Which Option to Choose for Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Even though the Zendesk customer satisfaction survey feature has evolved since it was introduced and offer increased flexibility, it still can’t quite match the depth of dedicated feedback tools. On the other hand, adding another integration to your workflow means extra setup and maintenance. So, let’s weigh the pros and cons of using Zendesk’s built-in CSAT tool.

Pros of the built-in Zendesk CSAT surveys:

• Simple setup. No coding or integrations required — it’s ready out of the box.
• Automated process. Solved tickets automatically trigger surveys.
• Cost-efficient. Included in your Zendesk plan.
• Multichannel. Works with email, chat, and your customer portal.
• Reliable. Built into Zendesk, so there’s minimal risk of connection issues.

Cons of the built-in Zendesk CSAT surveys

• Limited customization. No branding or design flexibility; fixed question format.
• Basic analytics. CSAT reporting in Zendesk offers summary metrics, without trend analysis or deep insights.
• Post-resolution only. You can’t trigger surveys at other stages of the customer journey.
• No automatic translations. A multilingual setup must be done manually.
• Plan restrictions. Available only with Zendesk’s Professional and Enterprise tiers.

If these drawbacks make you want to explore alternative tools to measure CSAT, while still using Zendesk as your help desk, don’t worry. Zendesk integrates with plenty of great measurement tools.

Third-Party Tools for Collecting Customer Feedback in Zendesk

Zendesk Marketplace is brimming with CSAT scoring solutions. Let’s explore the most popular ones: GrowthDot’s NPS and Survey, Nicereply, and SurveyMonkey.

NPS and Survey by GrowthDot

NPS and Survey is a feedback tool built specifically for Zendesk. It lets you collect feedback through a five-star scale or simple yes/no buttons, as well as add extra questions and text fields for detailed feedback.
The app supports multilingual surveys: just pick a language from the drop-down menu to add translations right in the editor. Customization is easy too: upload your logo, adjust its size, and choose matching colors for text, buttons, and background.

Pricing starts at $95 per month.

Nicereply

Nicereply is a customer management platform that focuses on gathering feedback through CSAT, CES, and NPS surveys.

For CSAT surveys, you can pick from several formats (i.e., 2 Thumbs CSAT Scale, 3 Smileys CSAT Scale, 10 Stars CSAT Scale, 5 Stars CSAT Scale). The surveys are fully customizable: you can add your logo, adjust colors, and include extra questions with translations into any language. Or you can start from scratch and use your own template instead of one of Nicereply’s templates.

In addition to post-resolution surveys, you can embed Nicereply surveys right in an email signature or have them appear as pop-ups on your website. You can ask customers about their experience at every touchpoint with a survey link. You can also control when surveys are sent, who receives them, and how often, to prevent over-surveying.

The platform provides real-time ratings with detailed analytics, trend tracking, and team performance insights. You can even compare your results to other companies through its Happiness Stats.

Pricing starts from $59 per month.

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey goes beyond a standard CSAT surveying tool with AI that streamlines survey creation and analysis. It imports questions, suggests formats, designs branded themes, and scores survey quality. After responses roll in, AI analyzes sentiment, filters low-quality data, and delivers instant insights with visual summaries.

You can share surveys via email, QR code, social media, or web links, and even collect responses offline or by SMS. Advanced analytics let you build dashboards, compare results, tag responses, and benchmark performance.

Pricing starts from $25 per month.

Common Challenges of Measuring CSAT in Zendesk and Other Platforms

Even with the right setup, it’s easy to misinterpret or misuse CSAT data. Here are a few common mistakes to avoid when measuring customer satisfaction:

Low response rates

If too few customers respond, your data won’t represent the full picture. Try experimenting with timing, simplifying the survey, or sending surveys through multiple channels to boost engagement.

Biased results

Happy customers are more likely to respond, which can skew results. Cultural mindset also greatly influences response rates. Encourage more balanced participation by surveying randomly and keeping questions neutral.

Ignoring qualitative feedback

Don’t overlook the comments behind the scores. Written feedback reveals the “why” behind customer sentiment and often points to actionable improvements.

Overreliance on CSAT

CSAT measures short-term satisfaction, not loyalty or retention. Combine them with metrics like NPS or CES for a fuller view of customer experience.

Conclusion

Zendesk CSAT surveys are a solid way to measure customer satisfaction, though they do have some limits. The good news? There are plenty of alternative standalone tools in the Zendesk Marketplace. So if Zendesk meets all your other needs for customer support, don’t compromise on tracking customer happiness just because its CSAT feature doesn’t measure up.

And if you’re just starting with Zendesk, Help Desk Migration can make moving your data from your current platform quick and hassle-free.

FAQs About Zendesk CSAT