Design CSAT survey questions and follow-up rules
Use a 1–5 star rating as the headline CSAT question, add conditional follow-ups that appear only on low ratings, and configure follow-up rules so customers can give more context when a score needs it. This article covers the questionnaire structure and the Follow-up Questions section of a survey in Settings → CSAT surveys.
Before you start
- Admin permissions on CSAT settings
- The CSAT survey open for editing in Settings → CSAT surveys
- A clear answer to “what do we want to learn?” — the survey design depends on this
Build the questions
A common starting structure:
- 1 — Rating (1–5 stars) —
How would you rate the support you received?— The headline metric - 2 — Open-ended (conditional) —
What could we have done better?— Show only when rating ≤ 3 - 3 — Rating 1–5 (conditional) —
How easy was it to get your issue resolved?— Show only when rating ≤ 3 - 4 — Open-ended (optional) —
Anything else you'd like to share?— Always visible, not required
Conditional follow-ups can ask for either a text answer or another 1–5 rating. Use text when you want detail in the customer’s own words; use a rating when you want the follow-up to be counted and averaged alongside other rating answers.
You can also use NPS (How likely are you to recommend us?, 0–10) as the headline question instead of stars. Mixing both in one survey gets long; pick one as the primary metric and stick with it.
Configure follow-up rules
Optional but valuable. In the Follow-up Questions section, each rule adds a conditional question to the survey page. Click Add rule and configure:
- Show when rating is between — choose the 1–5 rating range that should show the follow-up question, such as 1–3 for low scores
- Follow-up Question — write the prompt customers see when their score matches the range
- Answer type — choose Text answer for an open-ended “what could we improve?” prompt, or Rating (1–5) when you want the customer to score a specific part of the experience
- Required — optionally require the customer to answer the follow-up before submitting the survey
Use Text answer when the goal is diagnosis: what went wrong, what was confusing, what the customer expected. Use Rating (1–5) when you want a structured follow-up metric, such as ease of resolution, agent helpfulness, or speed. Rating follow-up answers appear in response counts and average rating calculations, and they are included in CSV exports.
Follow-up rules only change what the survey page asks. They don’t alert anyone, create a case, or tag the conversation, and no automation rule trigger fires when a customer submits a CSAT rating — the only CSAT step in automations is the Send CSAT survey action.
Verify it worked
Submit a test response with a low rating on a real (non-demo) conversation: the conditional follow-up should appear after the low score.