How to measure and improve Customer Effort Score (CES)

Seventy-three percent of consumers view experience as a crucial factor in their purchasing decisions, ranking just behind price and product quality. This trend underscores the importance of enhancing customer experience and reducing customer effort.

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a CX metric businesses can use to measure customer satisfaction and experience. CES allows businesses to pinpoint friction points in the customer journey and make improvements. Brands can use CES surveys to boost customer satisfaction and foster loyalty over time.

This guide on measuring Customer Effort Score explains how to effectively use CES to enhance the customer journey. Continue reading for a step-by-step guide to CES and success tips. 

Customer Effort Score measures the relative effort customers put into interactions with a brand.

The Customer Effort Score, created in 2010 by CEB researchers, demonstrates that customer effort impacts satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. It is a common metric businesses use to identify friction points and support improvements to the customer journey.

CES surveys help companies understand how much effort customers exert to achieve a goal. The primary CES survey question is a Likert scale, asking, "On a scale of 1 to 7, how easy was it to solve your issue today?” 

CES surveys measure effort rather than satisfaction, providing actionable insights and allowing companies to modify processes to create low-effort experiences. With CES, businesses can assess the effects of alterations to the identified friction points over time.

The CEB researchers believed that exceeding customer expectations wasn’t the most important factor affecting customer loyalty. Rather, they assumed repeated seamless experiences with a business drive loyalty.

Companies should pay attention to their Customer Effort Score, as it strongly predicts overall customer loyalty and satisfaction. By assessing customer efforts and streamlining processes, businesses can enhance their service. 

Customers who experience less effort during interactions, such as checkout processes and returns, are likelier to remain loyal to a brand.

CES effectively predicts customer loyalty and enables businesses to improve CX. Andrew Schumacher, Senior Principal at Gartner, states, “Customer effort is 40% more accurate at predicting customer loyalty as opposed to customer satisfaction.”

If you want to increase customer loyalty, you need to monitor your CES score and intervene in high-effort customer touchpoints. 

In addition to customer retention, future purchase behavior can be predicted.

Research indicates that purchase rates tend to surge significantly when customers have low-effort experiences with a brand. Specifically, 94% of customers who experience low-effort interactions say they intend to make repeat purchases.

This suggests that simplifying the customer experience enhances satisfaction and actively contributes to customer loyalty and repeat business. It highlights the importance of streamlining processes to facilitate easier consumer interactions.

A good customer effort score only tells part of the story of the customer journey. Combined with customer service metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS®) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), CES provides a complete picture of the customer experience.

CSAT, NPS, and CES work together to accurately represent customer satisfaction. Businesses can use CES, along with other metrics, to measure how well they are serving customers. 

Implementing CES into your customer experience strategy helps businesses capture meaningful and actionable data.

Follow these seven steps to use Customer Effort Score to improve your business’s customer loyalty and retention.

Begin by setting objectives for your CES survey. These objectives should include identifying which customer touchpoints need improvements. Other objectives can be things like:

A CES survey can be deployed at many strategic points throughout the customer journey, and its objectives will be unique to each touchpoint.

For instance, if a business aims to reduce the number of incomplete checkouts, it should send a CES survey after cart abandonment. This approach will help identify why customers may leave without completing their purchase.

Asking the right CES question is critical to the accuracy and success of your survey. Tailor your question to the interaction you want to measure.

For instance, a business measuring effort during a customer support interaction may ask, “How easy was it to solve your issue today?” The customer will then respond using this scale: 

1 - Very difficult

2 - Difficult

3 - Somewhat difficult

4 - Neutral

5 - Somewhat easy

6 - Easy

7 - Very easy

Businesses should be deliberate in selecting the primary question for a CES survey. Asking the right question fosters more accurate feedback from customers.

A business can employ various methods to distribute a CES survey. These methods include sending the survey through email, SMS, post-interaction pop-ups, and in-app notifications. The ideal delivery method will depend on the specific interaction it addresses.

For instance, if a user makes a purchase using your company’s app, an in-app notification sent after checkout may be the most effective approach.

In the case of an email support conversation with a customer support agent, a business may send a follow-up CES survey email.

CES surveys can be completed quickly and sent in various ways. Consider the most natural transition from the interaction to choose the best method.

Timing is crucial for CES surveys. The Customer Effort Score should be measured immediately after the interaction to achieve optimal results.

Sending CES surveys right after a transaction or interaction keeps the customer’s experience fresh in their minds. However, if the survey is delayed, the results may become skewed. 

Businesses should automate sending CES surveys during key interactions. This will ensure accurate, real-time feedback is collected promptly every time.

The next step is to turn pain points and negative feedback into improvements.

Let's face it. Knowing how much effort your customers exert is not enough to reduce high-effort interactions or increase loyalty, like tracking customer satisfaction does not improve overall satisfaction.

Your Customer Effort Score will not improve if feedback sits in a spreadsheet. Businesses should swiftly act on customer feedback to improve customer experience and brand loyalty over time. 

Customer insights from CES surveys are valuable to a business's overarching customer experience strategy. These insights can significantly impact the way customers view a business. Increase brand reputation and loyalty by taking customer feedback seriously.

Customer Effort Score surveys often highlight training needs for customer service team departments.

CES surveys may indicate that a customer service touchpoint takes too long or that employees are undertrained. These high-effort service interactions can cause frustration, churn, and dissatisfaction.

Businesses should provide training to empower customer service teams to provide smoother, more efficient customer support. Investing in quality customer service training equips employees with the necessary knowledge and tools.

Knowledgeable representatives lessen customer effort.

Teams should make continuous process improvements to achieve a good customer effort score.

Creating streamlined customer interactions is key to boosting customer loyalty and brand reputation. Businesses should regularly send CES surveys to support up-to-date insights. These insights can be turned into actionable steps for improvement. 

Businesses should optimize key customer interactions to promote customer satisfaction. Customers will appreciate updates to core processes such as website navigation, support chats, or checkout. 

To calculate Customer Effort Score, businesses should use this formula:

Let's look at a customer effort score calculation example.

A business collected 500 responses total to their CES survey. The results are as follows:

The sum of all responses is 2,560.

So, using the formula:

(2,560) / (500) = 5.12

In this example, the average CES is 5.12. Is this a good or bad Customer Effort Score? Keep reading.

There is a distinction to be made between measuring CES and calculating CES.

Businesses measure CES by collecting direct responses from customers. Measuring CES refers to the process of gathering this feedback from customers. This involves gathering feedback through surveys and asking customers to rate their experience.

CES surveys typically ask one core question in which customers give a rating. Then, it may ask a couple of open-ended follow-up questions to collect further information.

On the other hand, calculating CES involves taking collected survey data and summarizing it using an average or other metric to get an overall Customer Effort Score.

An example of calculating CES is averaging scores across all responses to define a single Customer Effort Score.

Measuring CES gives raw, customer-driven insights, whereas calculating provides a usable metric for comparing over time. This metric can be compared to industry benchmarks or to internal benchmarks to measure improvements.

What is a good Customer Effort Score?

Unlike a Net Promoter Score survey, there is no universally standardized benchmark for the Customer Effort Score due to varying response scales used by different companies.

For instance:

As a general guideline, aiming for the top 20% of your chosen scale is advisable. On a scale of 1-7, this translates to a score of 5.6 and above indicating a good CES.

Additionally, businesses should review the qualitative data they may have gathered through CES surveys. Open-ended responses provide deeper insights into customer effort and give actionable feedback on how to reduce friction. 

Monitoring your CES score over time and benchmarking against industry standards can provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction and areas needing attention.

Choosing the right CES is highly dependent on your core question. Generally, CES surveys use 1-7 scales to measure customer effort. The scale can be formatted as either:

The scale format you use will depend on the question you ask.

For instance, you may ask customers to rate their agreement with a statement like, “It was easy to get the help I needed today.” In this case, the "1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree" format makes sense.

For a question like, “How easy was it to complete your transaction?” Use the 1 = very difficult and 7 = very easy format. 

Additionally, some companies may choose to use a 1-5 scale in a similar way.

Inform your customers of the scale format before they take a CES survey to ensure accurate data.

Businesses should follow a few best practices when implementing Customer Effort Score surveys into their customer experience strategy.

These best practices enable businesses to gather the most accurate data to enhance customer experience with lower-effort interactions. 

Regularly measuring Customer Effort Score is crucial for understanding the customer experience, but it’s important to strike a delicate balance to prevent overwhelming customers with too many surveys.

To achieve this, teams should develop and implement clear processes that outline the appropriate frequency and timing for sending out CES surveys. 

For instance, it’s generally not advisable to survey repeat customers after every transaction, as this could lead to survey fatigue and potentially harm the customer’s perception of the brand. Instead, the focus should be on directing CES surveys to new customers who are making their initial purchases.

This targeted approach can provide valuable insights into the onboarding process and help identify areas for improvement without burdening loyal customers.

By establishing thoughtful criteria for survey distribution, teams can ensure they gather meaningful feedback while maintaining a positive customer relationship.

When deploying Customer Effort Score surveys, it's important to choose the appropriate distribution channel based on the customer interaction context. 

Various channels—such as email, SMS, in-app notifications, and follow-up calls—each have their advantages. Consider customer preferences; for example, if the interaction was over the phone, an SMS or call survey can capture immediate feedback. For email interactions, using a follow-up email can be effective as well.

The key is to select a channel that feels natural for the customer experience. Aligning survey distribution with the interaction type increases the chances of receiving valuable feedback and boosts response rates.

For the most comprehensive view of customer experience, teams should combine CES with other metrics like CSAT and NPS. Customer Satisfaction Score and Net Promoter Score are two other common metrics used to measure customer satisfaction and experience. By evaluating these three metrics together, businesses can paint a clear picture of the customer journey. 

A CSAT survey asks customer satisfaction questions such as: 

Questions like these and many others can be utilized to gather feedback on customer satisfaction. Businesses can improve their product or service offerings with these insights. 

Net Promoter Score measures customer satisfaction by asking, "How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?" Customers then respond using a 0-10 rating scale. Customers are then separated into three categories:

Teams can use NPS to determine customer satisfaction and loyalty. Businesses can also use NPS industry benchmarks to see where their score falls. Together, CES, CSAT, and NPS are powerful measurements of customer experience. 

Customer Effort Score is an important measurement businesses can use to enhance loyalty and brand reputation. Businesses can elevate customer experience by regularly measuring and reducing customer effort. With the right channel and timing, brands can gather key insights using CES surveys. 

Businesses should consistently use CES alongside other metrics to gain optimal insights into customer experience. SurveyMonkey empowers teams to build better customer experiences, increasing revenue, retention, and loyalty. With SurveyMonkey, teams can quickly create and send customer feedback surveys, such as CES, CSAT, and NPS. Get started today by signing up for a free account. 

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.