Why am I receiving unexpected bad satisfaction ratings?

Question

I received a bad satisfaction survey response. When I followed up with the customer, they confirmed that they never opened the survey or didn't give a bad rating. Why are we receiving false bad ratings?

Answer

Your customers likely have anti-malware installed on their computers or run link expanders on their mail servers. These programs open links in the email to verify that they aren't malicious. Since customer satisfaction (CSAT) ratings store the last rating link clicked, a script that clicks every link will register a bad satisfaction response.

Enable DKIM and SPF records to help ensure that links are not scanned. These email authentication protocols decrease the likelihood that the link expanders will flag emails from your Zendesk account for inspection.

If you have set up SPF and DKIM and still experience problems, there are two workflow options to resolve the issue:

Modify your survey automation to not include direct response links

Create your own satisfaction survey and use the Satisfaction Rating Endpoint

Modify your survey automation to not include direct response links

By default, the Request customer satisfaction rating (system automation) includes a block with both the good and bad response links. Switch this out for a placeholder that contains a link to a separate page with these options instead.

To modify your survey

In Admin Center, navigate to the Automations page

Locate the Request customer satisfaction rating automation, and click on that automation to edit

Scroll down to Perform these actions to locate the Email body section

Within the Email body section, locate the {{satisfaction.survey_section}} placeholder and replace it with {{satisfaction.survey_url}}

For more information on placeholders available in Zendesk Support, see the article: Placeholder reference for business rules.

Create your own satisfaction survey and use the Satisfaction Rating Endpoint

If you are comfortable with writing custom code, you can make your own survey and use the Satisfaction Rating endpoint to feed the results into your Zendesk. This will ensure that you can still use Zendesk reporting on the CSAT survey. With a custom survey, you can add a verification step to stop the link expanders.