5-Star Survey Projects

Simple & Powerful: 5-Star Surveys by Delighted

Collect clear feedback with Delighted's 5-star surveys. Easy to understand and answer, they are:

Flexible	Go beyond CSAT or NPS with a wider array of possible questions
Frictionless	Ensure higher response rates with a quick and intuitive format
Friendly	Approachable replacement for traditional Likert and other scale options

Delighted's 5-star survey options!

1. Delighted CX All-in-One: Take our evergreen CX platform for a free spin! Visit Getting Started with CX for a quick and effective start

2. Flexible Delighted Surveys: Visit Getting Started with Delighted Surveys for all your survey needs. It's the most user-friendly tool around! And explore our AI Recommended Questions and pre-built Templates too!

The CX 5-star structure

After providing their 5-star Metric score, customers answer an open-ended Comment question to explain their responses. Then, they’ll respond to any Additional Questions you’ve configured before being presented with a customized Thank You page.

Sample 5-star question

Sample 5-star Comment page

How 5-star scores are calculated

The 5-star scale is interpreted as:

5 stars: Very friendly
4 stars: Friendly
3 stars: Neither friendly nor unfriendly
2 stars: Unfriendly
1 star: Very unfriendly

5-star calculations are a simple average — adding all of your individual scores and dividing by the number of individual responses. And there you have it: your 5-star average rating!

The 5-star score is rounded to the nearest tenth.

An example

Let's say we received the following responses:

5 stars: 50 responses
4 stars: 25 responses
3 stars: 20 responses
2 stars: 15 responses
1 star: 10 responses

With 120 total responses, the calculation becomes:

Score total: 50(5) + 25(4) + 20(3) + 15(2) + 10(1) = 450

Response total: 50 + 25 + 20 + 15 + 10 = 120

5-star score: 450 / 120 = 3.75, which rounds to 3.8

Testing and previewing 5-star CX surveys

There are two — very different — preview options to consider. You can:

1	Preview a 5-star question in customization mode
2	Preview an entire 5-star CX project in a platform testing environment

1. Preview a 5-star question in customization mode

Visualize how your 5-star question will appear (with the Desktop and Mobile preview options) as you customize the look and feel of your survey. Preview the changes you make to the color scheme, logo, and text elements of your 5-star question in real time. (See CX Customization Basics.) You can also add Additional questions and tweak your Thank you page all in one place.

2. Preview an entire 5-star CX project in a platform testing environment

Previewing how respondents will experience your full survey (particularly if you've added Additional Questions to your questionnaire) requires testing at the platform level.

To learn how to test and preview your entire survey questionnaire, click and explore each of the distribution platform(s) that you have deployed from this list:

Platform	Links to the 'how to' instructions
Email	Testing and previewing the Email platform
Web	Testing and previewing the Web platform
Link	Testing and previewing the Link platform
Kiosk	Testing and previewing the Kiosk platform
SDK	Testing the SDK Platform — Previewing the SDK Platform

Test and preview each of your platforms independently

Additional questions are added to each platform independently of the others; ergo, you should preview and test each of your distribution platforms separately.

Who are 5-star surveys for?

5-star surveys are ideal for businesses looking to get a clear picture regarding how customers like a particular product, service, or another aspect of their brands. 5-star questions provide wide-ranging flexibility. They are also ideal for audiences speaking multiple languages — since the idea of a 5-star rating is universal.

Interested in how clean a guest found their hotel room? The timeliness of a service agent? The quality of a recent webinar? 5-star surveys can tackle all of these scenarios.

Note: 5-star surveys are 17% of all Delighted surveys.

When should I send 5-star surveys?

A key benefit of the 5-star system is its versatility. Whereas surveys like NPS, CES, Likert, and CSAT are more strictly focused on certain underlying outcomes, the 5-star survey can be deployed with wide-ranging customization and in a multitude of situations.

5-star surveys are often sent immediately following a specific customer touchpoint with your brand or product, such as a retail transaction, sales interaction, or delivery of a service — and can also be sent on a regular basis to measure overall brand or product satisfaction. With Email sends for example, send a One-time follow-up, or recur your surveys every few months as needed with Autopilot. You can also send from your favorite CRM with the help of a Delighted Integration.

1	One-time	Send surveys immediately (or schedule in the future) — with the One-time survey feature
2	Autopilot	Send repeat and recurring surveys on a regular cadence —scheduled with the Autopilot feature

Type, paste, or upload your email list into either option above.

Watch how easily 11 people are added to Autopilot from a .csv spreadsheet file.

Problems to avoid in your 5-star surveys

5-star surveys are one of the most well-recognized and widely used methods for collecting customer feedback. However, there are some key considerations that are unique to 5-star surveys that you’ll want to keep in mind.

More stars indicate a higher rating

Always customize your survey such that 5 stars represents the positive upper limit, and 1 star represents the negative lower limit. The 1 (negative) to 5 (positive) scale is the most widely accepted and intuitive rating structure for the 5-star system, and will ensure your data is easy to interpret.

Here’s an example of a question structure you want to avoid:

Simplicity is key

Less is more when it comes to question customization. Here are two key areas to avoid:

Don’t combine questions

If you’re using the word “and” in your question, your survey is likely measuring separate topics. (Consider the question: “How was your service with our shipping and customer support teams?” What if the shipping team deserved a 5, but the support team only a 1?) Your scores will be more accurate, and feedback more actionable, if you narrow the focus to one specific topic

Keep it short and simple

Verbosity can quickly confound and frustrate customers. For example, take the question: “When considering your recent purchase experience, specifically regarding a purchase made between January 1 and August 1, how would you rate the quality of support received via our chat widget?” This question is overly detailed. And "chat widget" may add unnecessary jargon. Most folks will avoid trying to make sense of it and just delete your email. Keep your questions simple and sweet

Learn more in section 11. CX Best Practices of our Help Center.