In BPO, DSAT stands for dissatisfied, the score that tracks the share of surveyed customers who rated their contact at the bottom of the scale. It is the mirror image of CSAT, counted separately because a dissatisfied customer is the one the account most needs to explain.
How DSAT works day to day
After a call or chat the customer may get a short survey, commonly a one-to-five scale. The top scores count toward customer satisfaction; the bottom one or two count as a DSAT. Accounts report both because they answer different questions: satisfaction says how many customers were happy, DSAT says how many were actively unhappy, and the second is far more useful for finding what went wrong. Each DSAT is tied back to the agent who handled the contact, so it appears on your scorecard by name.
A DSAT starts a small ritual. The agent, and usually the team leader, listens to the call or reads the chat, writes a short analysis of what happened, and agrees an action if the cause was on the agent's side. Where the customer was angry about a price, a policy, or a product fault the agent could not change, most accounts allow a dispute: the survey is reviewed and, if the cause is clearly outside the agent's control, it is excluded from the agent's number while still counting for the account. Getting those disputes filed is a large part of how tenured agents keep their DSAT low.
DSAT in a Philippine BPO
On a Philippine floor the thing to understand about DSAT is sample size. Only a fraction of customers answer surveys, so an agent handling hundreds of contacts might receive a few dozen responses a month, and one or two DSATs are enough to move the percentage past the target. That is why agents watch survey counts as closely as the score, why a bad week early in the month feels so heavy, and why some accounts weight DSAT above satisfaction when incentives are calculated. The other local detail is the analysis itself: DSAT write-ups are expected to be specific about the call, not generic promises to do better, and on many accounts a run of them across a quarter turns into a coaching plan with a paper trail rather than a conversation.
DSAT: quick answers
01Is DSAT just the opposite of CSAT?
Close, but the middle of the scale belongs to neither. On a five-point survey the fours and fives are usually satisfied, the ones and twos dissatisfied, and the threes are counted in the total but in neither bucket. So CSAT and DSAT rarely add up to a hundred.
02Can a DSAT be removed from my score?
On many accounts, yes, through a dispute. If the review shows the customer was unhappy about something the agent could not control, the survey is excluded from the agent's number. It still counts for the account, because the customer was still dissatisfied.
03How many DSATs is too many?
It depends on how many surveys you receive. Accounts set DSAT targets as a percentage, and with small survey counts a couple of low ratings can cross it, which is why the number is read alongside the count rather than on its own.
Related terms
DSAT sits alongside the vocabulary you will hear in the same breath on the floor: CSAT (customer satisfaction), QA (quality assurance), KPI (key performance indicator), and AHT (average handle time). Each entry answers in the first forty words, the same way this one does.
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