Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer Effort Score (CES) provides insight into the ease of the customer’s experience and is particularly useful in assessing customer satisfaction and predicting customer loyalty.

The fundamental idea behind CES is that customers who find interactions effortless are likelier to have a favorable view of the company and remain loyal. Effortless experiences contribute to customer retention and advocacy.

CES is one of the important customer experience metrics used in conjunction with others like net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) to understand customer sentiment and engagement with a company comprehensively.

Here’s how CES is typically measured:

• Survey Question: After a customer interaction, a survey is often conducted with a question like: “To what extent do you agree with the following statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue?”
• Response Scale: The response scale typically ranges from “1,” indicating “strongly disagree,” to “7,” indicating “strongly agree.”
• Calculation: The average score of all respondents is then calculated to obtain the CES.

A high CES indicates that customers find the interaction or experience effortless, signifying a positive experience. On the other hand, a low CES suggests that customers perceive the experience as burdensome or frustrating, indicating room for improvement in the company’s processes or systems.

Businesses use CES in various ways, including:

• Service Improvement: Identifying areas of high customer effort to streamline processes, improve user interfaces, or enhance the overall customer journey.
• Customer Feedback Analysis: Analyzing customer comments associated with the CES survey to gain qualitative insights into what aspects of the interaction were perceived as effortless or challenging.
• Customer Segmentation: Segmenting customers based on their effort scores to tailor service strategies and support accordingly.
• Predicting Customer Loyalty: Understanding that customers who find interactions effortless are likelier to remain loyal and recommend the company to others.