What is Customer Effort Score (CES) and how do you implement it right?

Picture this scenario: you’re calling a company’s customer support department to resolve an issue you have with their product, but you’re being transferred from person to person, and you have to repeat your details over and over. 

Frustrating, right? This is exactly what the Customer Effort Score (CES) aims to measure—how easy (or difficult) it is for customers to get what they need.

In this article, we’ll explore the concept of CES and why it matters for customer satisfaction. We’ll also provide actionable strategies to help your business improve CES and reduce friction, so make sure you keep reading. Let’s get started. 

What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy it is for customers to interact with a business. It typically focuses on how much effort they have to put into resolving an issue, completing a task, or getting support.

The concept behind CES is simple: the less effort a customer has to exert to get what they need, the more satisfied they tend to be. Thus, it’s often used after customer service interactions or post-purchase.

Why is CES important?

Calculating your company’s customer effort score plays a crucial role in improving customer satisfaction. By taking it into account during interactions, your customer-facing teams can: 

• Address customer pain points
• Predict customer loyalty 
• Improve customer retention

Knowing how easy (or hard) your customers have it when using your product or service will help you eliminate time-consuming processes, thus reducing friction in the overall customer experience. So, let’s move on to the topic of how to measure customer effort score. 

What is a good customer effort score?

A good Customer Effort Score (CES) typically falls on the lower end of the scale, as it measures the ease of a customer’s interaction with a business. Here’s a breakdown based on the most common CES scales:

7-point scale:

• Scores of 1-3 are considered good, indicating that customers found their experience easy and did not exert much effort.
• Score of 4 is neutral, meaning the experience was neither particularly easy nor difficult.
• Scores of 5-7 are poor, suggesting that customers had to put in more effort than they should have, and it may indicate a need for improvement.

5-point scale:

• Scores of 1-2 are good, reflecting minimal effort required from the customer.
• Score of 3 is neutral.
• Scores of 4-5 suggest higher effort, meaning there may be friction in the customer experience.

General benchmark:

A CES score of 5 or lower on a 7-point scale (or 2 or lower on a 5-point scale) is generally considered a strong result. The goal is to have as many customers report low effort in their interactions as possible, as higher scores indicate more friction in the experience.

The lower the CES, the easier your customers find working with your business, which typically correlates with higher satisfaction and loyalty.

How to measure CES

CES surveys typically ask customers to rate the ease of their experience on a scale, usually ranging from 1 to 7 or 1 to 5 on a Likert scale. Alternatively, you can use emojis or verbal quantifiers ranging from Very Easy to Very Hard to make the survey more fun and user-friendly. 

Generally, the higher the score, the more effort the customer feels they exerted. However, depending on how you want to frame your question, it might be the other way around. Common examples of CES survey questions include: 

❓”On a scale of 1 to 7, how easy was it to resolve your issue?”

❓“How easy was it to resolve your issue today?”

❓”How much effort did you have to put forth to handle your request?”

After multiple customers answer over a pre-determined amount of time, you can calculate your customer effort score by taking the average score of all responses. For example, if five customers responded with scores of 2, 3, 4, 2, and 3 on a 1-5 scale, your average would be 2.8. 

This average indicates overall customer effort. Depending on what question you posed, lower averages mean easier interactions, while higher averages suggest more effort—or it might be the other way around.

CES vs. Other customer metrics

A customer effort score is commonly analyzed alongside other metrics, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). This allows businesses to get a better overview of what their clients feel about their products and services. 

But how do these metrics differ from one another? In the table below, we’ve outlined a comparison to help you visualize what sets each one apart. 

Thus, CES measures how easy it is for customers to complete a task or resolve an issue, NPS gauges customer loyalty by assessing how likely they are to recommend the company, and CSAT captures short-term satisfaction with a specific service or product. 

By understanding these customer success metrics and using them together, businesses can gain a holistic picture of their performance in terms of customer effort, loyalty, and satisfaction.

When to use CES

There are some essential moments during the customer journey when you should send out a customer effort score survey. We’ve separated them into two main categories: post-interaction surveys and key customer touchpoints. 

A. Post-interaction surveys

CES is most effective when used immediately after specific customer interactions, allowing businesses to measure how easy or difficult the experience was. Examples include:

• After a customer interacts with support
• Following the return of a product
• When they perform an action on the website
• After a billing inquiry or payment

Tracking customer effort scores after interactions helps businesses identify friction points. Reducing customer effort enhances satisfaction, improves operational efficiency, and increases retention by making resolutions faster and more seamless.

B. Key customer touchpoints

CES is valuable at several important points in the customer journey to provide actionable insights. Some key customer touchpoints to evaluate are:

• Following the onboarding process
• When checking out after a purchase
• After resolving a technical issue 
• When a customer renews a subscription

Measuring customer effort scores at key touchpoints such as onboarding or checkout helps optimize the customer journey by identifying and eliminating barriers. This leads to increased conversions, stronger customer loyalty, and actionable insights.

How to implement CES in your business

Implementing a customer effort score survey for your company isn’t difficult if you keep a few best practices in mind. Here’s what you need to do: 

• Identify key touchpoints to measure CES. Pinpoint crucial customer interactions where effort matters most, such as support calls, onboarding, or checkout processes.
• Design simple surveys with a clear rating scale. Create short, focused surveys using a scale (1-5 or 1-7) that asks how easy or hard it was for customers to complete a task.
• Choose delivery methods like email or SMS. Send CES surveys through contact channels where customers are most likely to respond.
• Integrate CES with your CRM or support software. By integrating CES with your existing CRM or support platforms, you can automatically collect and track CES data.
• Analyze data to identify and address friction points. Regularly review CES responses to detect patterns where customers are encountering high-effort interactions.
• Act on feedback to simplify customer processes. Use CES insights to make tangible improvements in processes or services.
• Combine CES with other metrics like NPS and CSAT. Implement CES alongside other customer experience metrics to get a comprehensive view.
• Continuously monitor and refine your CES strategy. Regularly assess your CES strategy, adjusting it as necessary based on evolving customer needs and expectations.

Top 6 ways to improve Customer Effort Score

Measuring and analyzing your company’s customer effort score is a long-term process that will require fine-tuning along the way. There are a few things you can do to ensure that you consistently get the best results possible. We’ve outlined the six main ones below:

1. Simplify customer interaction processes

Streamline customer interactions by removing unnecessary steps and making them more intuitive. Focus on creating a seamless experience from start to finish, ensuring that customers can achieve their business goals with minimal effort. This reduces friction and increases overall satisfaction.

2. Enhance self-service options

Develop comprehensive self-service tools like FAQs, knowledge bases, and chatbots to help customers find solutions quickly. Empowering customers to solve issues independently reduces their need to contact support, speeding up the digital customer experience.

3. Improve first-contact resolution (FCR)

Empower customer service agents with the tools and authority needed to solve problems on the first contact. Quick, efficient resolutions delivered by reliable teams reduce effort for customers and help build trust. 

4. Reduce unnecessary steps in the journey

Identify and eliminate redundant steps in customer processes to minimize friction. Simplify workflows and decision points, making it easier for customers to complete their tasks. A streamlined journey leads to faster resolutions and less frustration.

5. Train customer service agents

Provide customer service agents with thorough training in both efficiency and empathy. Empathetic, knowledgeable agents are more likely to resolve issues quickly, reducing customer effort and enhancing their satisfaction in the long run.

6. Automate repetitive tasks 

Leverage automation for repetitive or time-consuming tasks to make processes faster and less labor-intensive. This will help eliminate human error and speed up routine interactions like billing or appointment scheduling.

Conclusion

Measuring and improving your customer effort score is essential to reducing friction in customer interactions and boosting overall satisfaction. By tracking CES at key touchpoints and implementing strategies like simplifying processes and enhancing self-service, businesses can create a seamless experience for their users. 

Reducing customer effort not only leads to higher satisfaction but also drives loyalty and retention. Start measuring CES today and act on the insights to ensure your customers have an easy, positive experience with your brand.