Waiting 20 minutes to reach the right agent is a common customer service frustration. You then had to narrate your complaint from the beginning, only to be told to hold on again or call back. It’s frustrating.
It takes a lot of effort on the customer’s part—effort is hard work. And no business wants customers to feel like they’re doing hard work when interacting with them. Because the moment customers feel that way, they won’t hesitate to jump ship.
For this reason, smart businesses constantly measure their customer effort score (CES). The CES allows organizations to gauge the level of effort customers put into interacting with them.
With this knowledge, companies can improve the user experience, leading to repeat business and loyal customers. Keep reading to learn how customer effort scores can help your organization reduce and even eliminate customer friction.
What is a customer effort score?
The customer effort score measures the effort a customer puts in when making a purchase, resolving an issue, or having any interaction with a company. It is measured through surveys asking customers to rate the ease of their experience on a scale, typically from 1 to 7 or ‘Very Easy’ to ‘Very Difficult.’
A low effort score indicates an effortless experience, leading to high customer satisfaction and loyalty. As you can imagine, a high CES suggests friction, which is bad for business.
CES is like a compass that helps a business deliver a seamless customer experience. It reveals the ease with which customers resolve issues and can highlight deeper issues not previously apparent through follow-up questions.
Why measuring CES matters
According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Consumer Report, 80% of customers value their experience with a company as much as its products and services. And they won’t hesitate to leave if a business can’t offer them an immersive experience. Another study reveals that 73% will go to a competitor after a couple of bad experiences.
For this reason, it’s worth keeping an eye on your customer effort score. Let’s discuss the benefits in more detail below.
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Reduce customer effort
As an organization, your goal should be to make customers’ lives as easy as possible. Brands that can do this will attract and retain customers. This is the purpose of a customer effort score—it helps you identify where customers are struggling.
With this information, you can then take steps to simplify your processes. For example, if online checkout requires too many clicks, you can eliminate unnecessary steps.
Enhance product and service offerings
CES can provide actionable insights into which aspects of your product or service need improvement. It can reveal whether customers put in too much effort when using your product or any high-effort service interactions.
Then, this data can guide product development and tweaks in your service offerings, reducing customers’ efforts—a surefire way to meet customer expectations.
Improve customer loyalty
Bad customer service leads to dissatisfied and disloyal customers. A great experience, however, earns a business repeat purchases, loyal customers, and good word of mouth.
It’s simple: when customers can easily find what they’re looking for, there is no reason to look elsewhere. They keep patronizing the brand and become advocates.
A customer experience score can give organizations the data they need to boost customer retention.
Evaluate the quality of customer support
CES can give you valuable insight into how easy or not customers find it to interact with your customer support team. You can end support calls with a customer feedback survey or ask CES questions after customers use self-service options.
A high CES on this survey can help determine if customers find it easy to reach, understand, and get assistance from your support representatives. These factors are crucial to a positive customer experience.
Lower costs
If you want to reduce operational costs, reduce customers’ effort when interacting with your organization. A low-effort experience means fewer support tickets, calls, and customer service interventions, which saves the company money.
How to calculate CES
There are two main formulas for calculating customer effort score: open-ended CES survey and scaled CES survey.
The open-ended CES survey formula is used with survey responses that don’t include a numbered response—for instance, rating customer effort on a scale of 1-5
Examples of open-ended CES survey questions include:
- What would you change about our service and why?
- How have you found using (Product name) so far?
This formula is represented as:
CES = The sum of CES ratings / Number of survey responses
So, if the number of CES ratings is 200 and the total number of survey responses is 50, your CES would be 4 (200/50).
The scaled CES survey formula is used when survey responses include a numbered response or any response on a scale—this can be customers rating efforts on a scale of 1 to 10 or an emoji scale.
Scaled CES survey questions usually go along the lines of the following:
- On a scale of 1 to 7, how easy was it to resolve your issue today?
- How would you rate your recent order? Choose one: 😡😞😑🙂😃
It is represented as:
CES = Percentage of positive responses – Percentage of negative responses
Say the total response is 200, and there are 150 positive responses and 50 negative responses. First, you’ll find the percentage of positive and negative responses:
Positive responses – 200/150×100 = 75% and negative responses – 200/50×100 = 25%, making the final CES calculation 75% – 25% = 50%
Tips for creating a customer effort score survey
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Consider the following factors before sending out a CES survey.
- Set a survey goal: Effective surveys usually have a purpose. Think about what you want to achieve at the end of the CES survey. Do you want to understand the checkout experience better or identify the bottlenecks customers face when using the self-help feature? Once you have established your goal, build your survey around it.
- Get the timing right: The best time to send out a CES survey is immediately after an interaction. The experience is still fresh, and customers can give you accurate details. So, send out that survey after purchase, right after a support call, or after any recent interaction.
- Use the right channels: With proper knowledge of your audience, you can use the channel they prefer most. That said, a multi-channel approach can also be quite effective and increase customer engagement.
- Make surveys straightforward: Simplicity is the name of the game. Keep CES questions clear and concise so customers don’t need to exert additional effort just to complete the survey.
- Avoid leading questions: Questions like “How do you feel about our quality product?” aren’t reliable for getting accurate CES results. They impact customer answers.
- Consider an open-ended option: With open-ended questions, customers can fill in the gaps your CES survey might not cover. While open-ended responses can be subjective, they add valuable context to quantitative data.
How to improve customer effort score
Low-effort interactions increase customer satisfaction, keep them coming back, and make them brand ambassadors. Below are four strategies to make that happen:
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Evaluate the entire customer experience objectively
The first step towards improving the customer effort score is taking an unbiased look at the entire customer journey. Identify and address high friction points like confusing digital interfaces, long wait times, or repeated handoffs.
Use customer analytics tools to assess every channel, from voice calls to email and SMS, to understand how customers interact with your organization. Through this data-driven approach, you can pinpoint inefficiencies and develop targeted solutions.
Empower your support teams
Provide support teams with the necessary training and resources to reduce customer effort during support interactions.
For instance, give agents access to comprehensive customer profiles, which can be achieved through a well-maintained B2B contact database.
By doing so, you equip them with the skills to better serve customers and resolve issues on the first contact, eliminating the need for multiple interactions or escalations.
Strive for real-time resolutions
The longer customers wait for a resolution to their problems, the more CES is affected. This can also discourage them from making future purchases. That’s why you need to prioritize immediate responses to customer issues.
One way to do this is to invest in robust customer support software with live chat solutions that provide instant assistance 24/7. Another solution is to provide multiple customer support channels to reduce wait times and ensure customers can reach support through their preferred method of communication.
Act on customer feedback
Don’t just collect feedback—put it into action. Regularly analyzing customer responses helps identify recurring pain points and areas needing immediate attention. Based on this feedback, create an action plan and communicate changes to customers, showing them their input matters.
Final words
Every interaction throughout the customer journey contributes to a customer’s view of a business—each web visit, social media interaction, checkout interaction, and support interaction.
Therefore, you must strive to streamline these experiences. The most effective and proactive way to do this is to constantly monitor customer effort scores.
To this end, define your survey goal and send this survey at the right time and through the right channels. It is also important that you make the survey as simple as possible to increase the chances of engagement and completion. But more importantly, always act on the feedback received.
FAQs
What is the best customer effort score?
The general rule is to aim for an average of 5 or 6 (on a 7-point scale). A perfect score of 7 likely means customers didn’t put in the effort to rate the business honestly.
What are the types of CES questions?
There are typically four types of CES survey companies use. They include:
- Numbered CES survey questions
- Emotions CES survey questions
- Open-ended CES survey questions
- Likert CES survey questions
What is the difference between CSAT and customer effort score?
CES, unlike CSAT (customer satisfaction score) and NPS (net promoter score), measures the effort customers must exert in order to resolve issues or accomplish specific tasks.
Updated Jun 24, 2025
