A simple end-of-conversation prompt
A lightweight 'was this helpful?' after a conversation wraps up gets you a usable signal without adding friction — keep it to one tap or click, not a full survey with multiple questions that most visitors will simply ignore or close out of.
Even a low response rate on a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down prompt is useful directionally over time — you're not looking for statistical rigor, just a rough signal you can track month over month alongside your transcript reviews.
Watch for feedback given in the chat itself
Visitors often say things like 'that's not what I meant' or 'this isn't helping' directly in the conversation — these are free-form feedback if you're reading transcripts, even without a formal rating system in place. This kind of unprompted, in-context feedback is often more specific and useful than a generic satisfaction score, because it tells you exactly what went wrong.
Make a habit of specifically flagging these moments when you're doing your regular transcript review, since they're a concentrated source of the most actionable feedback available to you.
Don't over-ask
A rating prompt on every single conversation gets ignored fast, the same way any survey fatigue sets in when asked too frequently. Reserve it for conversations that ran a few exchanges, where the visitor is more invested in the outcome and more likely to give a real, considered answer rather than dismissing the prompt reflexively.
Combine both sources for the full picture
Neither source alone tells the whole story — explicit ratings miss the nuance of what actually went wrong, while transcript review alone misses the visitor's own sense of whether they were satisfied. Together, they give a more complete picture than either would on its own, and neither requires much additional setup once you have transcript access.
