Your call center’s customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a key metric for overall performance. The experience your customers have with your call center is essential—in many cases, it’s the only real interaction they will have with your business.
A low CSAT score means you’re delivering poor customer service, which is a quick path to:
Customer churn
Lost revenue
Reputational damage
But if you want to know how to improve CSAT, you need to take a close look at how your call center is handling these interactions.
In this article, we’ll show you how to improve customer satisfaction in a call center with actionable steps you can take. But first, let’s cover exactly what CSAT is and why it’s so important for your business goals.
CSAT is a core performance metric that reflects how happy customers are with your products, services, or an interaction with an agent. It’s usually measured through a simple post-interaction survey, asking customers to rate their experience on a scale from 1 (poor service) to 5 (outstanding service).
To calculate your CSAT, take the number of positive responses (usually 4s and 5s), divide by the total number of responses, and then multiply it by 100 to get a percentage. If 80 out of 100 customers rate their experiences as positive, your CSAT score is 80%.
Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat shoppers, spend more, and require less follow-up—lowering your overall service costs. 60% of customers said they were 3.5x more likely to purchase from businesses that delivered positive customer experiences. It also complements other key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Average handle time (AHT)
Quality scores
But, knowing how to improve customer satisfaction levels isn’t as cut-and-dry as you may think. It’s far more complex than simply “being nicer to customers”, you need to rethink customer expectations from top to bottom.
According to customer service leader Shep Hyken, 79% of customers feel that a personalized experience is important. Customers (and potential customers) expect more than just answers, they want to feel recognized and appreciated.
Use your CRM to give your agents access to real-time insights into history, preferences, and past interactions, and train them to personalize these interactions whenever possible.
There’s a lower risk of dissatisfied customers when they feel cared for and listened to. Even little things like using their name more frequently can add up to excellent customer service.
Today’s customers want to reach out on their terms—whether it’s phone, chat, email, social media channels, or anything else—and they expect it to be fast and seamless across all channels.
Providing omnichannel support around the clock shows customers that you’re accessible and responsive, and it enables you to cover a global market. Using software, you can unify all communication channels and tools in one place, so your agents can deliver that consistent positive experience.
This also reduces the need for customers to repeat themselves when switching channels—something that 38% of customers find annoying.
Customers don’t always want to talk to an agent—especially younger generations. 38% of Millennials and Gen Z would completely give up on resolving an issue if they couldn’t use self-service, and 52% would stop being customers entirely.
With self-service tools you can empower customers to get the assistance they require without needing to speak to an agent (though there should always be an option to speak to one if desired). Think tools like:
Chatbots
Comprehensive knowledge bases
Interactive voice response (IVR) systems
Using feedback and internal data, you can learn what your customers want from these self-service options, so you can update your tools to better fit their needs.
Don’t wait for problems to come to your call center before acting—being proactive means reaching out to customers before they even know there’s an issue. Using your call center software, you can collect data that helps you identify:
At-risk customers
Friction points
Potential escalations
Proactive customer service means reaching out about things like account updates and service outages, or even just following up on prior customer concerns. You can use QA to find patterns and trigger outreach, showing your commitment and driving the kind of customer loyalty that delivers higher CSAT scores.
Empathy is the foundation of exceptional customer experiences. If your agents aren’t empathetic to customers and their needs, it can completely ruin the experience—96% of consumers agree that empathy is important for CX.
Even when you can’t solve an issue immediately, showing empathy in the moment can help de-escalate frustration and turn a difficult moment into a positive one. Training agents on soft skills like emotional intelligence, active listening, and empathy is a great starting point if you’re figuring out how to improve CSAT in a call center.
GenAI is rapidly changing almost every industry, including contact centers. You can use it in several ways to improve customer happiness in your call center, such as:
Offering real-time assistance during interactions via script suggestions and summaries of past interactions
Monitoring interactions with sentiment analysis
Automating after-call work, data entry, and tedious tasks to free up agents for more complex conversations
Creating intelligent self-service tools to handle common queries and simple interactions like checking balances or processing payments
However, it’s also important that you do not replace human agents with AI. They’re tools to help agents be more efficient, and there should always be a human element involved. This goes for your customers too—they should always have the option to speak to an agent if they want.
The work doesn’t stop at resolving customer issues, you should also recognize loyalty to your company. You can reward loyalty by:
Celebrating key milestones like anniversaries
Acknowledging repeat purchases
Creating a customer loyalty program
Even small gestures like personal thank-you messages or exclusive offers can help build customer relationships, boosting CSAT, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and customer retention rates.
You can also empower your agents to give loyalty bonuses and perks, so they have autonomy to compensate customers and save a potentially bad experience, or simply just reward them as a bonus.
Coaching isn’t a one-size-fits-all, especially if you’re trying to find out how to improve CSAT. Use valuable insights from your QA program and actual call recordings to create realistic scenario-based training where individual agents can learn and improve.
Whether it’s tone, product knowledge, or resolution speed, targeted coaching ensures your team builds the right skills faster. With AI-powered QA software, you can scale up your training efforts—and use data from interactions to get a better understanding of your agent strengths and weaknesses.
A key part of figuring out how to improve customer satisfaction is looking beyond your CSAT scores. Other KPIs—like NPS, first call resolution (FCR), average handle time (AHT), customer effort score (CES), etc.—can give you a more complete picture.
You can even find connections between your CSAT and QA scores to see the impact of agent behaviors (and friction points). Using AI-powered QA software, you can analyze sentiment, tone, and keywords at scale, too.
Additionally, real-time dashboards give agents and managers a live overview of how your call center is performing, and where CX may be lacking.
One of the most effective ways to improve CX in a call center is simply listening to your customer base—and 63% believe that companies need to do a better job of this.
Post-call customer surveys, feedback forms, SMS, and sentiment analysis tools allow you to gather feedback and respond when it’s appropriate (even if you can’t fix their issue), to make sure they feel heard.
The key is closing the loop: Take what they share, identify patterns, and take action to make changes that reflect their needs. When consumers know their voice matters, they become more engaged (and more satisfied).
You can also share real stories of how your business responds to negative feedback and fixes issues to reinforce your brand image and reputation.
If you truly want to know how to improve customer satisfaction, you need to see the experience from the customer’s point of view. Mapping the full journey—from initial contact to resolution—helps you identify moments where delays, confusion, or repeat calls happen.
This means laying out the entire consumer journey so you can identify common friction areas such as:
Handoffs
Drop off points
Long wait times/response times
Then, use data from your QA software to streamline this process and deliver a smoother, more efficient experience.
Support communities give your customers a space to connect, ask questions, and share solutions. These can be forums, groups on social media, or help center comment sections—anywhere customers can engage with each other and your brand.
When you moderate and contribute to these spaces, you can provide faster answers and build trust and brand loyalty, which leads to a better CSAT. Empowering a community and creating brand advocates reduces pressure on agents while giving customers a sense of belonging.
Delivering great CX starts internally. When your entire team (from leadership to frontline agents) puts the consumer first, CSAT improves across every touchpoint.
Make this focus a key part of hiring, training, coaching, and feedback. Share customer wins (and frustrations) in meetings to motivate agents to take a more active role. Notably, workplace cultures centered on CX deliver up to 60% greater profitability.
Choosing the right tools is essential for understanding and improving the experience your call center delivers. The right tool helps you track real-time feedback, uncover trends, and make smart decisions that directly impact CSAT. So, what tools should you look for?
Post-call survey tools (IVR, email, SMS): Collect immediate feedback after interactions to gauge how customers felt about their experience. Choose tools that allow easy customization and that can integrate with your existing systems.
CSAT dashboards, reporting tools, and analytics platforms: Visualize trends, spot issues, and monitor performance over time. Look for real-time updates, filter options, and the ability to drill down by agent, team, or channel.
Quality assurance: Use call center quality assurance software to review interactions, score agent performance, and ensure service consistency. Tools with automated workflows, AI-powered analytics, and coaching insights help improve support quality.
Sentiment analysis: Detects emotional tone in customer interactions using artificial intelligence (AI). These valuable tools highlight frustration, confusion, or delight, even when CSAT scores don’t tell the whole story.
The experience your call center delivers is the most important part of your whole operation. Weak CX makes customers 76% more likely to stop doing business with you, impacting your bottom line and harming your brand reputation.
Your call center’s CSAT has a direct impact on long-term success. High satisfaction builds trust and creates loyal customers, which in turn, increases retention and customer lifetime value (CLV). To achieve these outcomes, you must QA every interaction and find opportunities for stronger CSAT.
Try a self-guided demo of AI-powered QA, so you can see how it:
Expands QA coverage to 100%
Saves hours of manual work
Gives you a full 360° of service quality
