Hi Intercom team 
What we'd like
An admin-level setting that makes the CSAT comment field mandatory when a customer selects a rating at or below a configurable threshold. Today the comment box is always optional, so a large share of our low scores arrive with no explanation at all.
Two settings would cover it:
- Require a comment for ratings below X — where X is set by the admin. We'd set it at 3, but other teams may only want it for 1–2.
- Minimum comment length — a configurable character minimum (e.g. 10), so a single dot or a space doesn't count as feedback.
Expected behaviour on the customer side
- The customer taps a low rating, the comment field appears, and the submit button is disabled.
- The button stays disabled — with clear helper text such as "Please tell us what went wrong (at least 10 characters)" — until the minimum is met.
- Nothing is recorded until the comment is submitted, so the customer immediately understands why they can't proceed.
- Whitespace-only input and a single repeated character shouldn't satisfy the minimum.
- Helper/validation text should be editable and translatable, like other Messenger copy.
Ideally this applies everywhere CSAT is collected: the Messenger conversation rating, workflow- and email-based CSAT surveys, and Fin resolution ratings. Consistency across channels matters — otherwise customers simply rate through whichever surface has no requirement.
Why this matters to us
- Unexplained low scores are unactionable. We can't coach a teammate, fix a process, or follow up with a customer on "2 out of 5" and nothing else.
- CSAT feeds teammate performance metrics. An unexplained low rating directly affects someone's numbers, and we have no way to review whether it was fair.
- It skews reporting. A meaningful share of our satisfaction data carries no information at all, which makes the trend harder to trust when we present it internally.
- It discourages low-effort rating. Some customers click the lowest score reflexively, or repeatedly across conversations. A small amount of friction — you gave a 2, tell us why — filters out that noise, while genuinely dissatisfied customers are usually happy to explain.
What wouldn't solve it
We're not asking for a way to exclude ratings from reports after the fact. Filtering a report doesn't change the score that was already recorded, and it still leaves us without the explanation we actually need. The value is entirely in the friction at the moment of rating: a rating that can't be submitted without a real comment is either explained, or not given at all.
Functionally this looks like a contained change — a toggle plus a numeric field in the CSAT settings, and validation on the submit button — but it would significantly change how much we can do with our CSAT data.
Thanks for considering it! 