Satisfaction scales that employ symbolic images instead of text labels allow for greater comparability of responses across languages, eliminate survey translation burden, and avoid the ambiguity of purely numeric scales. However, little research has been done comparing "image-labeled" satisfaction scales with "text-labeled" scales. In this experiment, English-speaking respondents to a web-based customer satisfaction survey were randomly assigned to answer a series of three 7-point satisfaction questions in one of three ways: facial expression scales, text-labeled scales with labels at every point (running from "extremely dissatisfied" to "extremely satisfied"), or fully-labeled text scales with the addition of facial expressions at the end points only. This last condition was included to examine whether respondent transposition errors or primacy effects can be mitigated with a combined text/image scale. Key outcome measures were: the distribution of responses to the satisfaction questions, the correlation between a satisfaction question and questions measuring closely related constructs, and drop-off rates. For two of the three satisfaction questions, the facial expression scale produced average responses that were significantly lower (p<0.01) than either of the text-labeled scale conditions. Fewer respondents marked the top two categories of the facial expression scale than the scales with text-labeled points, producing a more dispersed and symmetrical distribution of responses. The facial expression scale also showed greater concurrent validity with questions measuring similar constructs than the two verbally-labeled scales. The two versions of the text-labeled scale produced nearly identical distributions of responses, and no significant differences in drop-off were found across the three conditions. Though results may vary depending on the specific verbal labels or images used, these findings suggest that a facial expression satisfaction scale can be equally or more valid than a text-labeled one while avoiding the burden of translation and the ambiguity of numeric scales.