Customer effort score

CSAT, or customer satisfaction score, is a post-contact rating averaged across responses and usually collected with a single question immediately after an interaction closes. Because only a small fraction of customers respond, CSAT reflects the experience of people motivated to answer rather than the whole contact population.

Net Promoter Score is a likelihood-to-recommend score used as a loyalty benchmark, calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. It produces a single comparable number, but the free-text comment attached to each score carries most of the diagnostic value.

First contact resolution is the share of issues fully resolved during a customer’s first interaction, with no follow-up contact about the same problem. It correlates strongly with satisfaction and cost, but only when measured over a defined reopen window rather than at ticket close.

Self-service is help a customer can complete without contacting support at all, such as a help centre article, an account action, or a guided flow. Its success is measured by task completion rather than page views, since a read article that fails to resolve still generates a contact.