A practical guide to Zendesk CSAT measurement and reporting (2026)

If you're a support leader, you're probably looking at customer satisfaction scores pretty often. A high satisfaction rate is a great indicator of a healthy support team, and Zendesk provides a fantastic foundation for tracking this. The real goal is to take that reliable data and turn it into actionable strategies to keep your customers happy.

Zendesk gives you a mature and reliable suite of tools to track customer satisfaction. As your team grows, you can move from basic tracking to more sophisticated, data-driven reporting. By understanding how to get the most out of these tools, you can move from simply measuring performance to actively refining the customer journey.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about Zendesk CSAT measurement and reporting. We'll look at the efficient out-of-the-box features, dive into advanced reporting with Explore, and show how AI options can help you proactively manage and enhance customer satisfaction as part of the Zendesk ecosystem.

What is CSAT in Zendesk?

Customer Satisfaction, or CSAT, is a proven and reliable way to measure how happy customers are with your support. Inside Zendesk, it’s a built-in feature designed to grab feedback right after you’ve successfully solved a customer’s problem.

How Zendesk's native CSAT works

Zendesk's built-in CSAT feature is elegantly simple. Once you switch it on, an automation sends an email to your customer after their ticket is marked "solved." This typically happens 24 hours later to give the customer time to reflect, though you can easily adjust this timing. The email asks: "How would you rate the support you received?" Customers can quickly respond with: "Good, I'm satisfied" or "Bad, I'm unsatisfied."

After they click, they land on a page where they can leave an optional comment. This gives you helpful context behind their rating. All that feedback, both the score and the comment, gets linked to the original ticket and is neatly organized in your Zendesk reporting dashboards.

Why native CSAT measurement is a strong foundation

The simplicity of the native CSAT feature is its greatest strength. By using a binary "Good/Bad" scale, Zendesk ensures a higher response rate because it's so easy for customers to provide feedback. This gives you a high-volume, standardized dataset to work with.

This system is perfect for identifying clear trends and spotting immediate issues. It allows you to quickly group feedback and focus on your overall service health. For many teams, this focused approach is exactly what’s needed to keep a pulse on customer sentiment without over-complicating the feedback loop.

Setting up Zendesk's built-in CSAT features

Getting started with Zendesk's native CSAT is quick and straightforward, allowing you to begin collecting data almost immediately.

Enabling the native CSAT survey

To turn it on, an admin just needs to head to the Admin Center, find the customer satisfaction survey settings under the "Tickets" section, and flip the switch. A pre-made automation is already set up to send the survey email after a ticket is solved. You can easily customize this automation to change the timing or add specific rules that fit your team's workflow.

Considerations for the default survey

While the default survey is highly effective for core reporting, it's helpful to understand its intended design.

• The binary scale: The choice between "Good" and "Bad" is designed to be frictionless for the customer. This helps you get a clear, unambiguous signal of satisfaction that is easy to aggregate and report on.

• Post-resolution focus: The survey is sent after a ticket is closed to ensure you are measuring the customer's final sentiment on the entire interaction. This provides a consistent benchmark for your team's performance.

• Standardized design: The survey's design is optimized by Zendesk to be clean and professional. For teams that want to maintain this consistency across their support experience, the native survey works perfectly.

For teams looking to add even more layers to this data, an AI platform like eesel AI can be a great complement. It can work alongside Zendesk to analyze conversation sentiment in real-time, providing additional context to the high-quality data already being collected in Zendesk.

Advanced Zendesk CSAT measurement and reporting with Explore

For teams who want to leverage the full power of their data, Zendesk offers a sophisticated analytics tool: Zendesk Explore.

What is Zendesk Explore?

Zendesk Explore is the platform's enterprise-grade analytics and reporting tool. It allows you to go beyond standard metrics and create highly tailored reports to track the specific KPIs that drive your business. It is a powerful tool for power users who want to dive deep into their support data.

Building custom reports in Explore

With Explore, you can build detailed reports to gain a deeper understanding of your team's excellence. Here are a few useful reports you can create:

• CSAT score by agent: This is a great way to recognize your top performers and identify opportunities for team-wide coaching.

• CSAT for one-touch vs. multi-touch tickets: This helps you understand how resolution speed impacts customer happiness, allowing you to optimize your response strategies.

• Analysis of ratings with comments: You can create focused views to look specifically at qualitative feedback, helping you get to the root of customer needs even faster.

Maximizing the power of Explore

Explore is a comprehensive tool that provides immense flexibility. Because it is so capable, it offers a wealth of features for those who want to master data analysis within the Zendesk ecosystem. It provides the depth needed for complex, large-scale support operations to stay ahead of the curve.

If you’re looking for a complementary way to gain quick insights, eesel AI offers a self-serve platform that can be a great addition to your Zendesk setup. It includes a simulation mode that can look at your historical tickets to show you how AI could assist your workflow, helping you identify automation opportunities alongside your Explore reports.

Enhancing your strategy: Using AI for proactive insights

To further strengthen your customer satisfaction strategy, you can use AI to complement Zendesk's robust reporting features.

Why AI complements traditional CSAT tools

While additional survey tools can offer more variety, AI provides a real-time layer of support. Instead of just looking back at what happened, AI helps you manage the customer experience as it's unfolding, working seamlessly within the Zendesk environment.

How AI enhances Zendesk CSAT measurement and reporting

An AI-powered agent doesn't replace your reporting; it makes it even more effective.

• Real-time sentiment support: AI can help identify when a customer might need extra attention during a live conversation. This allows your team to be proactive, potentially improving the CSAT score before the survey is even sent.

• Leveraging your existing knowledge: Tools like eesel AI can unify your knowledge by learning from your help center and your Zendesk ticket history. This ensures that every response is accurate and matches your brand’s high standards.

• Supporting your team with automation: By using eesel AI's flexible workflow engine, you can automate routine questions and ensure tickets are tagged correctly. This empowers your human agents to focus on high-value interactions that drive the best satisfaction scores.

• Proactive knowledge management: AI can help identify common questions that could be turned into knowledge base articles. By closing these gaps, you ensure customers get the help they need faster, leading to a natural boost in CSAT across the board.

Zendesk pricing plans and their impact on CSAT reporting

Zendesk offers a variety of pricing plans tailored to different team sizes and needs. The higher-tier plans provide the most advanced reporting capabilities for teams that require deep data analysis.

Here’s how CSAT and reporting features align with Zendesk's Suite plans in 2026.

Plan	Price (per agent/month, billed annually)	Native CSAT Surveys	Custom Reporting (Explore)
Suite Team	$55	Included	Pre-built dashboards
Suite Professional	$115	Included	Customizable reports
Suite Enterprise	$169	Included	Advanced custom reporting

As your needs for advanced Zendesk CSAT measurement and reporting grow, moving to the Suite Professional or Enterprise plans unlocks the full power of the platform's analytics.

Optimize your customer experience with Zendesk CSAT measurement and reporting

Zendesk's native CSAT features provide a reliable, world-class foundation for any support team. Zendesk Explore adds a powerful layer for those who need deep, custom insights. By mastering these tools, you ensure your team is always moving in the right direction.

The most successful teams in 2026 are using these robust Zendesk features alongside smart automation to create a proactive, world-class customer experience.

Enhancing your Zendesk CSAT measurement and reporting strategy

To see how you can further optimize your Zendesk setup, consider how eesel AI can work alongside your existing tools. It can provide helpful drafts and automation that let your agents focus on what they do best: helping customers.

You can get started in minutes to see how AI can complement your workflow. Try eesel AI as an addition to your Zendesk CSAT strategy today.```