CSAT vs NPS®: Which should you use?

If you work for an organization that measures customer success or happiness, you’ve likely heard of the customer satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score® (NPS) metrics. Both provide valuable insights into how customers feel about your company and the products or services you offer.

What’s the distinction between CSAT and NPS? We’ve got the answer to that question and more below. Keep reading to get the full rundown on CSAT vs NPS so you can measure your performance more effectively.

Insights on the CSAT vs NPS debate

What exactly are the CSAT and NPS metrics?

Both CSAT and NPS gauge customer happiness with regard to your business, but each has its own focus:

• CSAT measures a customer’s satisfaction with your company’s products and services. You would typically employ CSAT surveys (whether formal or informal) at the end of a key customer interaction, such as a purchase or a call with a customer service agent.
• NPS measures customer experience, customer loyalty, and overall perception of your brand; it also predicts business growth.

“NPS is future-looking because it helps predict customer retention and referrals,” says Teo Vanyo, CEO of Stealth Agents. “CSAT is more about measuring the past — how satisfied, for instance, customers were after certain changes you made in your service offering. However, this satisfaction is not necessarily a predictor of loyalty.”

Vanyo explains a customer might not be happy with one of your services after you change it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stop being a customer altogether. The same logic applies in reverse — you may provide one service that impresses a customer, but they still may not like your company. “That’s why NPS is a more effective tool for identifying overall customer value and how likely customers will impact future business.”

How do you calculate CSAT vs NPS?

You can calculate CSAT and NPS through customer surveys, but you have to ask slightly different questions to get accurate results for each metric.

CSAT

To measure CSAT, ask a question like this one:

On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall satisfaction with the [product/service] you purchased?

You can then use the CSAT formula to calculate the score:

CSAT Score (%) = (Sum of all ratings / Sum of maximum possible ratings) x 100

For example, if you sent a survey to 10 customers, the sum of maximum possible ratings would be 100. So let’s say the sum of all ratings from your customer responses was 80. Using the above formula, your CSAT score would be 80 percent. You can create quick CSAT surveys using Jotform’s star rating or Likert scale creator.

NPS

To measure NPS, ask a different question:

On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [the brand] to a friend or colleague?

NPS identifies three respondents:

• Promoters are those who give a rating of 9 to 10, are the most loyal, will likely refer others, and will positively contribute to growth.
• Passives are those who give a rating of 7 to 8, are lukewarm but still satisfied, and may find offers from competitors worth considering.
• Detractors are those who give a rating between 0 and 6, aren’t happy, and may negatively impact your growth with their reviews. 

To calculate NPS, use this formula:

Percentage of promoters (which could range from -100 to 100) – percentage of detractors

Need a tool that can help you measure both CSAT and NPS? Try Jotform, an easy-to-use form builder, which lets you create customized surveys to ask the right questions for your business; then you’ll have the information you need to calculate these key metrics. Jotform also offers an NPS field and templates to track promoter/detractor trends over time.

How do you use CSAT and NPS in practice?

In practice, teams typically trigger CSAT surveys after key touchpoints — like closing a support ticket, resolving a technical issue, or wrapping up onboarding — to capture how customers feel about specific interactions and quickly spot friction points. You can send these CSAT surveys via email, in-app pop-ups, or chat follow-ups, then segment the results by channel, product, or agent to see where experiences are consistently strong or weak. Many companies add one open-ended question (for example, “What could we have done better?”) so they can pair a quantitative CSAT score with qualitative insights that explain why customers feel the way they do.

On the other hand, NPS is sent later, once customers have used your product for 30 days or more, so they can rate the overall experience and their long-term likelihood to recommend your brand. Rather than tying NPS to a single interaction, teams often run it on a recurring cadence (such as quarterly) and compare scores by customer segment, plan type, or tenure to understand broader loyalty trends and identify at-risk groups. By tracking how NPS changes after major launches or policy changes, you see whether your strategic decisions are strengthening or weakening overall sentiment.

When to use both

• Use CSAT to diagnose immediate service issues and understand how customers feel about specific interactions.
• Use NPS to understand long-term loyalty trends and how likely customers are to stay, upgrade, or refer others.
• Use both together to see how individual experiences influence overall brand perception and to prioritize improvements that will have the biggest impact on satisfaction and loyalty.

As you can see, the CSAT vs NPS debate isn’t so much a battle over which is better — it’s more of a discussion about two metrics that provide important (and slightly different) perspectives about customer happiness. Use both to gain a full view of your customers — and make your work easier with Jotform. Get started today with one of over 400 prebuilt survey templates.

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