Your 7-day customer-satisfaction score, flagged when it falls more than 5 points against the prior period — the early signal that something in your support experience has slipped.
At a glance
CSAT Drop Alert watches your customer-satisfaction score for a sudden decline. CSAT is the share of rated conversations that customers marked positive, and a falling score is the clearest leading indicator that your support experience is deteriorating — before it shows up in churn or reviews. This card compares the last 7 days against the prior 7 and raises a flag when satisfaction drops by more than 5 percentage points. For Blitz, a CSAT dip during a busy sales week usually means agents are rushing, a product issue is generating frustration, or wait times have crept up. Catching it within days, not at the end of the month, is what makes it actionable.
Calculation
Vortex IQ pulls conversations rated in the trailing 7 days from the Intercomconversations endpoint, reading each conversation_rating value. CSAT is computed as positive ratings ÷ total ratings × 100 (Intercom’s rating scale tops out at the happiest face; “positive” is typically the top one or two points, per your profile setting). The same calculation runs over the prior 7-day window, and the card reports the current CSAT plus the percentage-point delta. A delta below −5 points trips the alert. Because the metric is sensitive to response volume, the card also carries the rating count so you can judge whether a move is statistically meaningful.
Worked example
A representative reading of CSAT Drop Alert for Blitz. In the prior 7 days Blitz scored92% CSAT across 140 ratings. In the latest 7 days it scores 84% across 155 ratings — an 8-point drop on healthy volume, so the alert fires. The support lead segments the negative ratings and finds they cluster around one product line (a running shoe with a sizing-guide error) and around conversations handled late in the evening. She fixes the sizing guide, adds a canned macro that sets expectations on fit, and adjusts evening cover. The next 7-day window recovers to 90%. To trace which conversations and agents drove the drop, she opens Vortex Mind; to ask “show me every negative-rated conversation tagged sizing this week” she uses Ask Viq.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Intercom’s own dashboard: In Intercom, open Reports → Customer satisfaction (the CSAT report). It shows your satisfaction score over a chosen range, the rating distribution, and breakdowns by agent and team. Set the range to the last 7 days and compare with the prior 7 to reproduce the period-over-period change this card flags. The negative-rating breakdown there is the same population the Negative-Rated Conversations sibling lists. Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:
Cross-connector reconciliation: a CSAT drop concentrated on a product cohort often ties back to commerce signals (out-of-stock, delivery delays) — cross-reference the out-of-stock complaints card. For divergence investigations, use Vortex Mind.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Q: How often does CSAT Drop Alert update? The 7-day windows refresh on the standard data refresh (typically every 30–60 minutes). New ratings flow in continuously, so the score moves as customers respond to survey prompts. Q: Why does my Intercom CSAT report show a different score? The usual reasons are a different definition of “positive” rating, a different date basis (rating date vs conversation close date), and low response volume making both samples swing. Set Intercom’s CSAT report to the same 7-day windows and confirm the positive-rating definition matches. Q: The alert fired but only a handful of people rated — is it real? Be cautious. On low volume, a single negative rating can move the score several points. Check the rating count (and the Rating Response Rate sibling) before acting; a drop on a thin sample warrants watching, not a fire drill. Q: Can I change the 5-point drop threshold? Yes. Thedrop >5pts trigger is configurable per profile in the Alert Rules tab — tighten it for a high-volume desk where small moves are meaningful, or loosen it for a low-volume queue where the score is naturally jumpy.