The Freshdesk Feedback Form
Two different things wear this name, and teams keep buying one when they wanted the other. Both are worth having. Neither will get the response rate you hope for.
Two things called a Freshdesk feedback form
When somebody says Freshdesk feedback form they mean one of these.
They serve opposite ends of the conversation. One collects a problem, one collects an opinion about how you handled a problem. Configuring the wrong one is a surprisingly common way to spend an afternoon.
The satisfaction survey
Freshdesk attaches a survey to resolution notifications. The customer gets a rating control inside the email itself, clicks it, and the response is recorded against the ticket and the agent.
The mechanics worth knowing:
The single biggest design decision is the number of clicks. A rating embedded in the email that records the answer on click will always beat a link to a form that asks for the rating again on arrival. If your survey makes the customer answer the same question more than once, fix that before you touch anything else.
The feedback widget on your site
The embeddable widget drops a small script onto your pages and gives visitors a way to contact you in place. It can show knowledge base articles first, and it can submit a ticket with the page URL attached, which is worth more than it sounds when somebody reports that the checkout is broken.
Field configuration matters here more than anywhere else in Freshdesk. Every field you add reduces submissions, and most of what you want to know can be inferred. The page they were on, the browser they used, the account they were signed into. Ask for the problem and an email address. Infer the rest.
It overlaps with the help widget and with the contact form on your customer portal. Running all three is fine, as long as you know which one generates which tickets, because otherwise your source reporting turns to mush.
What response rate to expect
Here's where I'll disappoint you gently.
Whatever benchmark you have been quoted, your number will be lower, and the shape of the responses will be worse than the average suggests.
Support surveys are answered by a minority of customers, and typically a small one. I'm not going to give you a precise figure, because anyone who does is describing a different business with different customers and a different email template. Measure your own for a month and use that as your baseline.
What matters more than the rate is the bias in it. Survey responses skew toward the extremes. Delighted customers answer. Angry customers definitely answer. The large middle, whose ticket was handled competently and unremarkably, mostly does not. So a satisfaction score isn't an average of your customers, it's an average of the ones who felt something.
Three things that genuinely move the rate. Fewer clicks, as above. Sending on resolution rather than days later. And keeping the survey to one question with an optional comment box, because the comment is where all the actual value is anyway.
Do not chase the rate by surveying more often. That reduces it. And treat any month with a small number of responses as an anecdote rather than a metric, which your reporting won't warn you about.
Making the responses useful
A score on a dashboard changes nothing. A read comment changes something.
Set up an automation that flags any low rating to a team lead immediately, with the ticket attached. A bad rating read within the hour is a recoverable customer. Read at the end of the month, it's a statistic.
Tag the comments by theme, even manually, even roughly. Twenty comments a week sorted into product, speed, tone and expectation will tell you more about your support operation than a year of averages.
And separate the two questions you are actually asking. Was the answer right, and was the experience good. Those fail independently, and a single satisfaction number hides which one broke.
Frequently asked questions
What response rate should you expect?
Freshdesk survey response rate on a solved-ticket Freshdesk CSAT survey usually sits in the low tens of percent. The Freshdesk feedback widget on your site collects far less, and both are still enough to spot themes.
How do I turn on the Freshdesk satisfaction survey?
It's configured in your admin settings under satisfaction surveys, where you set the trigger status, the scale and the questions. It attaches to resolution notifications by default.
What's the difference between the feedback widget and the satisfaction survey?
The widget sits on your website and creates tickets from visitors. The survey goes out after a ticket is resolved and collects a rating. Different jobs, different places.
What CSAT response rate is normal?
Lower than any benchmark you will be quoted, and heavily skewed toward customers who felt strongly. Measure your own for a month and use that as the baseline rather than an external figure.
Can I customise the Freshdesk feedback form questions?
On paid tiers, yes, including the scale and additional questions. Keep it to one question and an optional comment box if you want responses rather than an elaborate form nobody finishes.
Should the survey fire on resolved or on closed?
Resolved, in most cases. The interaction is fresh and the customer still remembers the detail. Firing on closure means asking days after the fact, when recall has faded.
Two surveys for one problem
When a customer raises the same issue twice, they get surveyed twice and your scores double-count. Ticket Merger merges the duplicates before that happens.
Start free trial14-day free trial. No credit card required.