Attendee satisfaction score (CSAT)
Attendee satisfaction score (CSAT) is a direct measure of how satisfied visitors were with an event or a specific part of it, usually captured as a 1–5 rating and reported as the percentage of respondents choosing the top one or two options. It measures the experience itself, not future advocacy.
CSAT and NPS get conflated, but they answer different questions: NPS asks whether attendees will vouch for the event, CSAT asks whether specific things were any good. That makes CSAT the better diagnostic tool — you can score registration, the app, session content, catering, and the meetings programme separately, and know exactly where the experience leaks. Smart organizers run micro-CSAT during the event (a one-tap rating after check-in or after each session) rather than saving everything for one long post-show survey, because in-the-moment scores are more accurate and arrive while there's still time to fix things on day two. Commercially, component-level CSAT protects budget decisions: when finance proposes cutting the thing attendees rate highest, you have evidence, not opinion. The common mistake is the twenty-five-question survey that gets a 4% response rate dominated by the angriest and happiest attendees; three questions at the right moment beat twenty-five in a Thursday email. One honest nuance: satisfaction scores skew generous — people rate politely, especially in person — so a 4.2 out of 5 is closer to "fine" than "excellent". The information lives in the movement between editions and the gaps between segments, not in the flattering absolute number.
Direct answer
Attendee satisfaction score (CSAT) is a direct measure of how satisfied visitors were with an event or a specific part of it, usually captured as a 1–5 rating and reported as the percentage of respondents choosing the top one or two options. It measures the experience itself, not future advocacy.
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