CSAT in Slack without a survey tool

You want to know whether the customers you support in shared channels are happy with the help they get. The usual answer is a survey tool: an email after each ticket, or a quarterly NPS form. For Slack support, both miss. The email arrives somewhere else, about a conversation the customer has already forgotten, and most people ignore it. The quarterly survey tells you how an account felt months after the request that annoyed them.

In a shared channel the customer is already there, in the thread, at the moment the request closes. That's the best place to ask.

Why survey tools miss Slack support

• Wrong place. The conversation happened in Slack. The survey lands in an inbox, where it competes with everything else.
• Wrong time. A survey sent hours later asks the customer to remember. A question in the thread right after a fix asks them to react.
• Too long. Every extra question costs answers. For a single support request, one question is enough.
• No link to the request. A rating that isn't tied to a specific request tells you the mood, not what to fix.

What a good CSAT question in Slack looks like

Keep it to one message in the request's thread, posted when the request closes:

• One question, such as "How did we do?"
• Three choices, such as Great, OK and Not good. A five-point scale invites overthinking. Three choices are quick to answer and easy to read.
• One tap to answer. No form, no link out, no required comment.
• A clear way back in. Tell the customer that replying in the thread reopens the request, so a rating never feels like the end of the conversation.

Buttons on the message are the natural choice, because people from the customer's workspace can't use your app's shortcuts. Reactions make a good fallback, and everyone knows how to use them.

When to ask, and when not to

Asking too often is the fastest way to make customers ignore the question. A few rules keep it useful:

• Only after a real reply. If a request closed without anyone on your team answering, there's nothing to rate.
• Not on every close. If a request is reopened and closed again in the same week, don't ask twice. Once a request has a rating, never ask again.
• Not on duplicates. When you merge a request into another, the conversation continues there. Ask on the one that stays open.
• Not in private conversations where the customer didn't expect it.
• Only for accounts that want it. Some customers welcome the question. Others see anything automated in their channel as noise. Make it something you turn on per account or per tier.

How to do it by hand today

You can start without any tool.

1. When you close a request, reply in its thread: "Did that sort it? React with 👍, 😐 or 👎."
2. Once a week, go through the closed requests and note each reaction next to the request link, the account and the owner.
3. Read every 👎 in full. Each one is a request to look at again, and often a reason to follow up with the customer.

It's manual and it won't scale past a handful of channels, but it shows you within a few weeks whether customers will answer.

Read the results honestly

CSAT from support requests is a small sample, and small samples mislead.

• Report the share of good ratings together with the number of ratings. A high share from a handful of ratings means little.
• Look at bad ratings one at a time. The reason is almost always in the thread.
• Compare by account, not only overall. One unhappy account can hide inside a good average.
• Treat silence as information. An account that never rates anything, and has stopped asking questions, may be the one to worry about.

Be wary of replacing the question with sentiment analysis of what customers write. It only measures what customers say in front of you. Slack's Marketplace rules also limit sentiment analysis to aggregate, transparent use. A question the customer chooses to answer is clearer for everyone.

How Thorpe handles it

CSAT in Thorpe follows the rules above. It is off by default, because it is one of the few things Thorpe posts in a customer channel. An admin turns it on in Settings > Channels, for all account tiers or for one.

• When a request closes, and only if a teammate replied, Thorpe posts "How did we do?" in the request's thread, with three buttons: Great, OK and Not good. There is no comment box.
• Only the customer's side can rate. A teammate who clicks is told that only the customer can rate the request.
• One rating per request. After a rating, the buttons are replaced with who rated it. A request that is reopened and closed again isn't asked twice within seven days.
• Merged requests and private requests are never asked.
• The rating appears in the request's activity, and Reports shows the share of Great ratings with the number of ratings behind it.

Apart from broadcasts you send yourself and the features you turn on, the only thing Thorpe adds to a customer channel is a 👀 reaction on your team's first reply. The privacy and security page lists what Thorpe stores.