Customer Effort Score: What it is and How to Measure it

Delivering a smooth customer experience (CX) is a key driver of business growth. Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal and recommend your brand to others, thereby supporting both retention and acquisition.

But what makes a great customer service experience? To consistently improve the customer experience (CX), businesses must measure customer effort and identify friction points at every stage of the customer journey.

While metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) are widely used, there’s another equally powerful but often underutilised metric, Customer Effort Score (CES).

CES provides a clear picture of how easily customers can interact with your business, helping to shape loyalty and long-term success.

In this guide, we’ll explore what CES is, why it matters, how it differs from other customer satisfaction metrics, and most importantly, how to measure and use it effectively.

What is A Customer Effort Score (CES)?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric used to measure how much effort a customer has to go to to get an issue resolved, a request fulfilled, or a question answered. 

The lower the effort required, the higher the likelihood that the customer will return and recommend your brand to others.

High effort, on the other hand, often leads to frustration, complaints, and churn. For example, in a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey, the statement might be:

"The company made it easy for me to resolve my issue.”

Respondents would then select from options such as:

1 – Strongly disagree
2 – Disagree
3 – Somewhat disagree
4 – Neutral
5 – Somewhat agree
6 – Agree
7 – Strongly agree

The History of the CES Survey

The Customer Effort Score (CES) survey was introduced in 2010 by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), which is now part of Gartner.

It came about as a response to the growing need for businesses to understand how customer effort impacts customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Before CES, businesses relied on traditional metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) to gauge overall satisfaction. 

However, CEB's research revealed that customer effort was a better predictor of loyalty than satisfaction or delight.

Their Effortless Experience study revealed that 96% of customers who encountered high-effort service interactions became more disloyal, compared to just 9% who had low-effort experiences. 

This insight led to the development of the CES survey, which focuses on measuring the ease of a customer's experience, especially in interactions like service resolutions or product purchases.

Since its introduction, CES has become a widely adopted metric for improving customer experience and reducing friction in business processes.

Why is the CES Survey Important?

Understanding CES can have some real benefits for your business. Below are some reasons why it’s a valuable metric:

1. Improves Customer Retention

One of the most important insights that CES provides is the impact of effort on customer loyalty. When customers find a company easy to work with, they are more likely to stay loyal.

Customers appreciate when businesses make their interactions simple, quick, and hassle-free. A high CES indicates that customers are putting in a lot of effort, which can lead to frustration and a higher likelihood of churn.

2. Helps Identify Pain Points

CES surveys allow businesses to pinpoint the exact areas in which customers are encountering friction. By analysing these pain points, businesses can improve the processes, tools, and systems that are causing unnecessary effort.

3. Cost-Effective Metric

CES is a simple, cost-effective way to measure customer experience. It does not require the data collection or the analysis that other customer satisfaction metrics might need.

In many cases, it’s a one-question survey that can be easily implemented across various touchpoints.

4. Focuses on the Customer Experience

While other metrics focus on satisfaction or the likelihood of recommending a brand, CES is centred around the customer’s experience in completing a task.

By measuring effort, businesses gain direct insights into how easy it is for customers to engage with their brand, which can be a more actionable metric than overall satisfaction.

Best Practices for Implementing CES

Here are some best practices for implementing a successful CES measurement system:

1. Make the Survey Simple

CES surveys are most effective when they are simple and easy for customers to complete. Limit the number of questions to avoid survey fatigue.

The single-question survey is the most effective and widely used method because it collects data without overwhelming the customer.

2. Target Specific Interactions

CES surveys are most useful when they are linked to specific interactions or touchpoints, such as a customer service call, a website visit, or a product purchase.

By targeting individual interactions, you can measure the effort required at each stage and gain granular insights into customer experience.

3. Time the Survey Correctly

Sending CES surveys immediately after an interaction will help you get accurate and relevant feedback.

If you send surveys too long after the experience, the customer may not remember the details clearly.

Timing your survey appropriately ensures that the customer’s feedback is fresh and tied directly to their recent experience.

4. Use CES Alongside Other Metrics

While CES is valuable, it should not be the sole metric used to evaluate customer experience.

Combine CES with other metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) to get a broad view of the customer experience. 

CES focuses on ease of experience, but other metrics can help gauge overall satisfaction or loyalty.

To truly improve every touchpoint, it’s important to view CES within the wider context of the entire customer journey.

If you want to learn more about how to connect the dots between key interactions, check out our Customer Journey Analytics Guide.

5. Act on the Feedback

The most important part of measuring CES is what you do with the feedback. You should analyse the data to identify pain points and then take steps to improve those areas.

Tools like MaxContact’s Contact Centre Analysis can help you drill into the data, find hidden trends, and turn insights into action. 

When Is the Right Time to Send a CES Survey?

You should use the Customer Effort Score (CES) when you want to measure how easy it was for a customer to complete a specific interaction with your business.

It's most effective in situations where the goal is to assess and improve the customer experience. Here are the best times to use CES:

After a Support Interaction

• Use CES immediately after a customer contacts your support team via phone, email, or live chat to gauge how easy the interaction was. According to Zendesk’s 2023 Customer Experience Trends Report, 61% of consumers say they would switch to a competitor after just one poor customer service experience, highlighting the importance of identifying and resolving high-effort interactions quickly.
  
  

• Example: “How easy was it to get your issue resolved today?”

After Completing a Purchase or Signup

• This is a good chance to use CES to understand how easy customers found your website. A poor experience here can be costly. A Gartner customer service report reveals that 80% of customers say they’ve stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer experience, making it important to identify and fix friction points in these interactions.
  
  
• Example: “How easy was it to complete your purchase?”

After Using a Self-Service Option

• If customers use FAQs, chatbots, or help articles, CES can tell you how easy those tools were to use. Around 60% of customers prefer self-service tools like knowledge bases when available. A poor experience here can still drive frustration and churn, though, especially if the solution is hard to find or unclear.

When Not to Use CES

• Don’t use CES to measure overall satisfaction or loyalty; metrics like CSAT or NPS are better suited for that.
  
  
• Avoid using CES too frequently or in irrelevant contexts, as that can lead to survey fatigue and skewed results.
  
  

In short, use CES when you want to find and fix pain points in customer service. 

How to Put Together a Good Customer Effort Score Question

A strong Customer Effort Score (CES) question is designed to measure how easy or difficult customers found a specific interaction with your company. To craft an effective CES question, follow these best practices:

Be Specific: Tailor the question to a particular touchpoint or experience.

Use Simple, Clear Language: Keep the wording straightforward so all customers can understand it. 

Be Neutral: Use objective language that doesn’t suggest a desired answer. Avoid leading questions like. 

Choose an Appropriate Scale: Use a consistent scale to allow customers to rate their effort level. 

Distribute at the Right Time: Send the survey immediately after the relevant interaction, while the experience is still fresh in the customer’s mind.

By following these guidelines, you’ll create CES questions that give actionable feedback and help improve the customer experience.

How to Calculate the Customer Effort Score (CES)

Calculating the Customer Effort Score is pretty simple. To determine your CES, add together all the individual customer effort ratings you’ve collected, then divide that total by the number of responses.

This gives you the average effort score, which reflects how easy or difficult customers found their experience overall.

Example:

If you have 100 responses and their scores sum to 420, your CES would be: CES = 420 ÷ 100 = 4.2. This simple formula helps you track and compare customer effort over time.

Customer Effort Score – The Pros and the Cons

While the Customer Effort Score (CES) has its advantages and disadvantages, it’s worth exploring whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks when using this type of survey. 

Does CES Tell the Whole Story?

Customer Effort Scores (CES) help to identify pain points in service interactions and assess how easy it is to use your product.

This data is only useful, though, if the feedback is turned into tangible improvements.

That’s where MaxContact comes in. By bringing all your key metrics—NPS, CSAT, and CES—together in one platform, you’ll have everything you need to take action on what matters most.

Book a demo today and get smarter customer experience insights.