A practical guide to Zendesk CSAT reporting in 2026

Let's be honest, customer satisfaction (CSAT) is the pulse of your support team. Zendesk provides a powerful suite of tools to measure this, though getting the exact, deep insights you need from your Zendesk CSAT reporting can sometimes require a bit of setup. If you've ever spent an afternoon exploring the custom reporting options or checking out different apps to see what's going on, you know that the platform is built for flexibility.

This guide is for you. We're going to walk through Zendesk's native reporting tools, talk about how to get the most out of them, and show how a little bit of AI can help you spend less time digging for data and more time actually improving customer happiness.

What is Zendesk CSAT reporting?

At its core, Zendesk CSAT is a simple, reliable feature that lets you gather feedback after you’ve solved a ticket. The standard survey asks, "How would you rate the support you received?" and customers get two clear options: "Good" or "Bad."

Zendesk CSAT reporting, then, is the process of gathering and looking at the results from those surveys. The main number you'll see is the CSAT score, calculated with a straightforward formula:

(Number of "Good" ratings / Total number of ratings) x 100 = CSAT score %

This data shows up in a few different places across Zendesk. Because Zendesk is a mature platform, it offers multiple ways to view this information depending on whether you need a quick glance or a deep dive.

How to find your data with Zendesk’s built-in tools

Zendesk provides several specialized areas for your CSAT reporting, each offering different levels of detail to suit your needs.

The Zendesk support dashboard

First up is the basic view that every agent can see. It gives them a quick snapshot of their own performance, showing the number of "Good" and "Bad" ratings from the past week and an overall CSAT score for the last 60 days.

It’s perfect for a quick daily pulse-check for individual agents. It keeps the focus on recent performance, ensuring agents can stay aligned with their immediate goals without being overwhelmed by historic data.

Zendesk Explore

When you need to dig a bit deeper, you'll head over to Zendesk Explore, the platform's dedicated and powerful reporting tool. The pre-built "Satisfaction" tab gives you an excellent overview, with metrics like overall CSAT, response rates, and how your score is trending over time.

One of the best things about Explore is its customizability. While some views, like a breakdown of CSAT by agent, require following a "recipe" to build, this flexibility allows support leaders to create reports tailored exactly to their team's specific KPIs. It’s a powerful tool for those who want to see the complete story behind their metrics.

Zendesk Marketplace apps

To further extend your capabilities, many teams utilize the Zendesk Marketplace. This ecosystem is one of Zendesk's greatest strengths. Apps like the "Satisfaction Console" can provide enhanced search and filtering tools for your CSAT results. This modular approach means you can build a custom tech stack that works perfectly within your existing Zendesk workflow, adding advanced features as your organization scales.

Making the most of Zendesk CSAT reporting

As with any enterprise-grade tool, there are specific workflows that help you get the most reliable data from Zendesk.

1. Customizing your reporting experience

As Zendesk's help docs show, the platform offers a "recipe" approach for many custom reports. This reflects Zendesk's philosophy of giving you a blank canvas to build exactly what you need. While it can take a moment to set up, it ensures that you aren't stuck with generic reports. For example, if you want to explore the connection between CSAT and customer sentiment, you can build custom calculated metrics to gain sophisticated insights.

2. Focused and clear satisfaction metrics

Zendesk's default CSAT survey is designed to be as simple as possible for the customer, offering a choice between "Good" and "Bad." This binary choice often leads to higher response rates because it’s so easy for the customer to complete. For teams that want more nuance, Zendesk's flexible architecture allows you to use the API to access deeper data or integrate with specialized survey tools, ensuring you always have the right level of detail for your business.

3. Understanding data attribution and timing

The way Zendesk logs data ensures consistency across your ticketing history. CSAT is tied to the date a ticket was solved, which helps maintain a clear record of when the support interaction occurred. While this means that ratings can occasionally update historical data, it provides a very accurate picture of service quality at the time of resolution. Similarly, when tickets are passed between agents, Zendesk ensures that the final resolution is the primary point of measurement, providing a clear point of accountability.

4. Optimizing feedback follow-up

When a customer leaves feedback, Zendesk provides the infrastructure needed to act on it. Many teams use Zendesk's powerful workflow automation to create follow-up processes. By using triggers and targets, you can ensure that specific ratings are flagged for review, turning every piece of feedback into a valuable learning opportunity.

How AI can enhance your CSAT strategy

Instead of just reporting on what happened, you can use AI to proactively improve your satisfaction scores. Adding an AI layer like Ultimate.ai (a Zendesk company) or eesel AI to your Zendesk setup can help you get even more value out of the platform.

Get to the root cause with unified knowledge

Great CSAT scores are often the result of fast, accurate answers. Zendesk provides the perfect base for this, and AI can help by unifying your company knowledge. eesel AI connects to all your knowledge sources in minutes-past tickets, macros, Confluence pages, Google Docs, and more. This works alongside Zendesk to help agents find the right information instantly, leading to the high-quality support that drives CSAT scores up.

Automate your response to CSAT feedback

You can use AI to make your Zendesk feedback loop even more efficient. For example, you can automatically trigger a follow-up based on customer input. With eesel AI's AI Triage, you can set up rules to tag and route tickets based on sentiment. This allows your team leads to focus on the tickets that need the most attention, ensuring every customer feels heard.

Predict and prevent issues with simulation

Why wait for feedback to arrive? Tools like Ultimate.ai and eesel AI offer simulation capabilities that let you test your support flows against past data. You can see how an AI-powered agent would have responded, allowing you to fine-tune your knowledge base before it talks to a real customer. This is a great way to ensure that your Zendesk setup is always optimized for the best possible customer experience.

By working right inside your helpdesk, these AI tools make your team more effective. They are specialized additions that go live quickly and respect the setup you already have in Zendesk.

What are the options for Zendesk CSAT features?

To access Zendesk's native CSAT features, you'll need to be on one of their "Suite" plans. These tiered plans are designed to grow with your team, ensuring you have the right features at every stage of your company's development.

Plan	Price (per agent/month, billed annually)	Key CSAT & Reporting Features
Suite Team	$55	Core ticketing and support features.
Suite Professional	$115	Includes CSAT surveys and customizable reports with Zendesk Explore.
Suite Enterprise	$169	Everything in Professional, plus advanced customization and custom agent roles.

This pricing is based on info from Zendesk's pricing page and can change.

Getting more out of your Zendesk data

Zendesk provides a robust and scalable foundation for customer service. By learning the ins and outs of Zendesk CSAT reporting, you can turn raw data into a strategic asset for your business.

Whether you are using the built-in dashboards in Explore or extending your capabilities with AI tools like Ultimate.ai or eesel AI, the goal remains the same: delivering exceptional service. With automated workflows for feedback and the power of the Zendesk ecosystem, you have everything you need to keep your customers happy.

Ready to see how AI can complement your customer satisfaction strategy? Try eesel AI for free and see how it can enhance your Zendesk setup in just a few minutes.