What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?

In the world of customer experience (CX), companies are constantly looking for ways to improve their services, streamline their processes, and ensure that their customers are happy. While traditional metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) have been the go-to tools for measuring customer loyalty, there’s another valuable metric that’s gaining momentum—Customer Effort Score (CES).

But what exactly is CES, and why should businesses care about it?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric designed to measure the level of effort customers feel they have to exert to accomplish a task with a company. Whether it’s resolving a support issue, purchasing a product, or navigating a website, CES is all about understanding how much friction customers experience during these interactions.

Unlike traditional satisfaction scores, which assess how pleased a customer is with their overall experience, CES focuses on the effort required to get a result. Essentially, it asks the question: How easy was it for customers to get what they needed?

How is CES Measured?

Typically, CES is gathered through a survey immediately following a customer interaction, such as after a support call, a purchase, or any customer-facing event. A common phrasing for the CES survey question is:

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

The answer is usually given on a scale with lower scores indicating that the process was easy and effortless, and higher scores suggesting that customers experienced challenges or frustration.

Why is CES Important?

While many businesses focus on ensuring high levels of satisfaction, CES helps to zoom in on the ease of doing business with a company. Here’s why CES is a game-changer:

Identifying Pain Points: By measuring how easy or difficult it is for customers to get things done, businesses can pinpoint specific friction points in the customer journey. Whether it’s a complicated checkout process, slow customer support, or confusing website navigation, CES shines a light on where customers are struggling.
Improving Customer Loyalty: Research shows that customers who have to put in a lot of effort to resolve an issue or complete a task are less likely to remain loyal. In fact, customers are often willing to forgive a mistake or bad experience if they feel the company makes it easy to correct. By reducing effort, businesses can boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Increased Efficiency and Cost Savings: High-effort customer interactions often require more time and resources to resolve. By focusing on reducing the effort customers have to put in, businesses can improve operational efficiency and potentially lower costs, while also enhancing the customer experience.
A Clearer Picture of Customer Sentiment: While NPS and CSAT measure how much customers like a brand or service, CES dives deeper into the specific interaction that led to their feelings. A low CES score can highlight areas for immediate improvement in processes and workflows, allowing businesses to take action before customer satisfaction declines.

How to Use CES to Improve Customer Experience

Track Key Customer Touchpoints: Implement CES surveys at various touchpoints in the customer journey, such as after a customer service call, post-purchase, or after a product return. This will help identify where customers are struggling the most.
Analyze the Results: Take the data from CES surveys and analyze it for trends. High CES scores in specific areas signal that customers are having a tough time. Look for commonalities in customer feedback that indicate the source of the difficulty.
Act on Feedback: Once you have identified friction points, work to streamline and simplify those processes. For example, if your CES surveys reveal that customers find it difficult to navigate your website, consider a redesign or improving the user interface.
Train Your Team: Often, high customer effort is linked to poor service or inadequate support. Investing in team training and ensuring your support staff has the tools they need to resolve issues efficiently can help reduce the customer effort.
Measure Over Time: CES is not a one-time measurement; it should be tracked continuously to see how your efforts to improve ease are paying off. Monitor your CES scores over time to ensure that changes are having the desired impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

CES vs. Other Customer Experience Metrics

Many businesses already measure customer satisfaction through tools like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). While these metrics provide valuable insight, CES adds an additional layer of understanding:

NPS gauges the likelihood that a customer will recommend a company to others, but it doesn’t tell you whether customers had to work hard to get what they wanted.
CSAT measures overall satisfaction but does not focus on the ease of interaction. A customer could be satisfied with a product but still find it difficult to buy or use.

CES gives a more granular view of the customer experience, zeroing in on areas that may be causing unnecessary friction.

How HappyOrNot Measures Customer Effort Score (CES

1. Customising Survey Prompts for CES

HappyOrNot’s existing feedback terminals and systems are highly flexible. To measure CES specifically, businesses can customise the prompts shown on HappyOrNot’s kiosks to ask customers about the level of effort required during their interaction. For example:

“How easy was it for you to complete your transaction today?”
“How much effort did you have to put in to get your issue resolved?”
“On a scale from 1 to 5, how easy was it to find what you were looking for?”

These questions directly align with the concept of CES, helping businesses gauge the effort customers had to exert to achieve their goal during their interaction.

By customising the interface to ask customers how easy or hard their interaction was, HappyOrNot can quickly gather real-time feedback that’s easy to understand and interpret.

2. Integrating CES with Other Metrics

HappyOrNot’s system often integrates with other customer experience tools like CSAT and NPS. By adding CES-specific questions to the mix, companies can view CES in parallel with satisfaction scores. This allows for a deeper understanding of customer sentiment:

If CES scores are high (indicating high effort) but CSAT scores are still good, it may suggest that customers are still satisfied despite facing challenges.
If CES scores are high and CSAT scores are low, this indicates a significant pain point in the process that needs attention.

3. Automated Reporting and Analytics

After the CES data is collected, HappyOrNot offers automated reporting and dashboards. These can analyse trends in customer effort across different touchpoints, locations, or departments, allowing businesses to track where friction exists in the customer journey. For example:

Location-based analysis: If one store or department has higher effort scores than others, it can signal inefficiencies or process issues that need addressing.
Time-based analysis: Identifying certain times or shifts when customers report higher effort levels helps businesses schedule staff or optimize processes during peak times.

4. Real-time Feedback for Immediate Action

One of the key benefits of using HappyOrNot is the ability to gather real-time feedback. This allows businesses to take immediate action to resolve customer pain points and minimize effort. For example, if a customer indicates high effort during a particular interaction, the business can address this by providing immediate assistance or reviewing the process to reduce friction for future customers.

Conclusion

By customising HappyOrNot’s feedback tools to ask about effort, businesses can effectively measure Customer Effort Score (CES) and gain valuable insights into how easy or difficult customers find their interactions. This data allows organizations to quickly identify friction points, improve processes, and enhance the overall customer experience.

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