Enabling and customizing satisfaction reasons

Customer satisfaction rating surveys allow you to measure how happy your customers are with the services you provide. Inevitably, you’re going to receive a less-than-glowing response (rare as it may be). You can learn about the issues behind a bad satisfaction rating by asking any customer who gives a negative survey response to select a reason for their dissatisfaction.

Enabling satisfaction reasons

Satisfaction reasons are managed through the Customers settings.

To enable satisfaction reasons

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Settings > Customers.
2. On the End-users (customers) settings page, click the Satisfaction tab.

3. In the Configuration Options section, click the checkbox to enable Ask a follow-up question after a bad rating. This opens the satisfaction reasons picklist.

   

4. Click Save Tab to accept the default reasons:

   • The issue took too long to resolve
   • The issue was not resolved
   • The agent’s knowledge is unsatisfactory
   • The agent’s attitude is unsatisfactory

   You can accept these reasons, or create customized reasons. See Customizing satisfaction reasons below for information.

   Once enabled, customers who respond to your survey by selecting “Bad, I’m unsatisfied” see a follow-up question that asks “What is the main reason you are unsatisfied?”, with a drop-down menu to choose their reason:

   

   This follow-up question is optional - customers can skip it by simply ignoring it and clicking Update - and it only appears to customers who select the response “Bad, I’m unsatisfied”.

Customizing and localizing satisfaction reasons

The default reasons address common, service-related issues customers may have, but these may not serve your needs. When you enable satisfaction reasons, you can customize the reasons offered to your customers to better reflect brand and product-specific language, unique customer experiences, and even cultural differences. You can also localize your custom reasons to reach customers in multiple languages.

Customizing the reasons list

There are any number of reasons why you may want to customize the reasons offered to your customers. Maybe you want to clarify whether a customer’s dissatisfaction is with a product rather than the service they received, focus on different aspects of your customer service, or simply change the reasons’ language to match your company’s style.

You can add an additional reason to the default list (up to five reasons are allowed), and remove the default reasons to make room for your custom reasons. However, the default Some other reason cannot be removed from the list.

The order your reasons appear in is randomized for each user, to prevent order bias.

To add a reason to the list

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Settings > Customers and click the Satisfaction tab.

2. Click the “+” button in the right-hand column and enter text for a new, custom reason.

   

3. Click Enter or click away from the text field to add the new reason to the Reasons not in use column. Reasons in this column do not appear in the customer survey follow-up question.

   

4. Next, move the reason to the Reasons in use column, so it is included as an option in the survey follow-up question.

   

5. Click Save tab. Your new reason is now included as an option in your survey.

While default reasons cannot be deleted, you can move them (as well as any custom reasons) into the Reasons not in use column, to make room for more custom reasons, or just to remove them from the reasons list.

To remove a reason

1. Click and hold the reason in the Reasons in use column you want to remove.
2. Drag the reason into the Reasons not in use column.
3. Click Save tab. The reason is removed from the survey.

To edit a reason

1. Drag the reason you want to edit into the Reasons not in use column.
2. Hover the cursor on the right side of the reason you want to edit. When the cursor symbol changes to a hand, click the reason.
3. Edit the reason text as you need. When you are finished, press enter.
4. Click Save tab.

Localizing custom reasons

You can customize your satisfaction reasons to appear in each of your customer languages, by integrating your reasons with dynamic content (available on Professional and Enterprise plans).

To localize a reason

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > Dynamic Content.
2. Click add item to add a new dynamic content item.

3. Add a new title for your dynamic content item, select your default language, and enter the translation for this language.

   

4. Click Create to create the new dynamic content item.
5. Click add variant to add a new translation for your dynamic content item.

6. Select a language for your item and enter the new translation.

   

7. Click Create to save the new translation. In this example, the satisfaction reason is localized in English and Spanish and has a new dynamic content placeholder, {{dc.sat_reason_product_issue}}

   

8. Navigate back to Settings > Customers > Satisfaction.
9. Click the “+” button to add a new satisfaction reason.

10. Insert your new dynamic content placeholder into the text field and type “Enter” or click away from the text field. The placeholder gets resolved to the language of the account when saved to make the satisfaction reasons easier to manage.

    

    If available, the translated satisfaction reason will appear in the correct customer language.

    

Using satisfaction reasons in reporting

Customer satisfaction reasons can be used with Zendesk Support’s reporting functionality, on the Satisfaction dashboard, and in Zendesk Insights.

In the Satisfaction dashboard, reasons are included in the Feedback section, as a sortable column, and as filter.

For information on working with the Satisfaction dashboard, see Viewing customer satisfaction score and ratings.

In Insights, users can use satisfaction reasons as metrics to analyze data and build reports.

For information on working with Insights, see Creating reports and dashboards in Insights.