The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a key customer experience (CX) metric that measures how much effort a customer has to exert to interact with a company or resolve an issue.
The core premise of CES is that low customer effort leads to higher customer loyalty. Customers are more likely to repurchase and remain loyal to companies that make it easy to do business with them.
How CES Works?
CES is typically measured by a single survey question deployed immediately after a specific interaction or “touchpoint,” such as a purchase, a customer support call, or an issue resolution.
Common CES Survey Question Format (CES 2.0):
A common question asks customers to what extent they agree with a statement, often on a Likert scale (e.g., 1 to 7):
- Statement: “[Company] made it easy for me to handle my issue.”
- Scale:
- 1 = Strongly Disagree (High Effort)
- 7 = Strongly Agree (Low Effort)
Another format asks about the level of effort directly:
- Question: “How easy was it to resolve your issue today?”
- Scale: Ranging from “Very Difficult” to “Very Easy” (e.g., 1-5 or 1-7).
Calculating CES
The CES is usually calculated as the average of all customer responses to the CES question.
Customer Effort Score (CES) = Sum of all individual CES scores / Total number of respondents
Interpretation of the Score:
- Higher Average Score (on an ‘Easy’ scale): Indicates lower effort for the customer, which is the desired outcome.
- Lower Average Score (on an ‘Easy’ scale): Indicates higher effort for the customer and suggests friction points in the experience.
Why CES is Important?
- Strong Predictor of Loyalty: Research suggests that high-effort experiences significantly increase the likelihood of customer disloyalty and churn.
- Identifies Friction Points: Because the survey is delivered immediately after an interaction, it’s excellent for pinpointing specific processes (like website navigation, checkout, or support channels) that are creating difficulty for the customer.
- Process Improvement: The insights gained from CES can be directly used to streamline operations, reduce service costs, and improve the overall customer journey.
CES is often used alongside other customer experience metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) (which measures overall loyalty) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) (which measures satisfaction with a specific transaction) to get a more comprehensive view of the customer experience.