What is a customer effort score?
3 October 2024
Authors
Keith O'Brien Writer, IBM Consulting
Amanda Downie Editorial Content Strategist, IBM
What is a customer effort score (CES)?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a single customer experience metric that measures the amount of effort a customer must use to interact with a company or use its products or services.

It’s one of several important customer service metrics companies should monitor to understand the health of their customer experience.

A CES score relates to how easy or difficult it is for a customer to use a product or service, or complete a task. A good CES score means they company is either providing good products, good customer experiences or both. A bad CES score is likely a sign of something wrong in an aspect of the user experience that is demanding more effort on behalf of the customer. This could likely to lead to customer churn.

Why does a CES score matter?

Companies should aspire to provide an effortless experience, which customers prefer and will likely lead to a good customer effort score. It is a good predictor of customer churn. Companies that create high-effort experiences will likely achieve a low CES and have trouble with customer retention. As such, measuring customer effort score is a key component of any customer experience process.

According to Zendesk, 73% of customers (link resides outside ibm.com) will consider switching brands to a competitor after multiple bad experiences. Considering a McKinsey study (link resides outside ibm.com) found that it takes three new customers to replace one lost customer, keeping customers happy should be a core component of any company strategy.

History of CES

The Corporate Executive Board (CEB), which was acquired by Gartner, introduced the CES in a Harvard Business Review article, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” (link resides outside ibm.com). In the article, the authors argued that CES better predicted true customer loyalty than NPS or CSAT.

A CEB study found that of those with a good CES, 94% expressed an intention to repurchase, and 88% said they would increase their spending. In addition, CES data found that 81% of customers with high-effort experiences planned to spread negative word of mouth.

CES vs. CSAT vs. NPS

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS) and CES measure different aspects of customer experiences and use different rating scales for customer engagement.

CSAT relates to a specific product or service, where companies ask how satisfied customers are on a scale of either 1–3, 1–5, or 1–10. The CSAT metric does not provide a broader perspective on customers’ long-term relationship with the company, instead focused on a specific moment in time.

NPS measures customer loyalty by asking customers how likely they are to recommend a company or its products and services to friends of colleagues. An NPS score is more likely to understand overall customer happiness because companies with high NPS have customer advocates who are likely to provide positive word-of-mouth.

CES complements CSAT and NPS by identifying those who are satisfied with how the process is being completed. Like CSAT, CES takes a snapshot of the customer experience. Therefore, it sometimes will not give a full picture of the customers’ lifetime relationship with a brand. For example, a customer who has a recent bad experience might score a company low on CES even if they remain satisfied with the company on the whole.

Companies should measure and track all three, knowing what each one’s strengths and weaknesses. While all three scores produce value, each does something slightly different.

  • An organization should use CSAT if it wants to know how satisfied customers are at any given time.

  • An organization should use NPS if it wants to know how likely it is that customers become advocates.

  • An organization should use CES if it wants to know how customers are encountering a certain product or workstream.

All three of these metrics combine to provide a comprehensive picture of the company’s relationship to its customers.

Different types of CES surveys

Companies that decide to track CES must consider which customer effort score questions they want to ask. There are four main types of customer effort score survey templates, which can be addressed in several ways. No matter which one they choose, all can be converted into a numeric value. The company can then create a customer effort score calculation by dividing the total by how many customers responded.

  • Likert scale

  • Numeric scale

  • Two-question surveys

  • Emoticon or image-based surveys

Likert scale

This is a ratings scale, where customers are asked to rank their opinions across several degrees of textual answers. The scale can feature any range of responses. For example, one CES survey question might ask people whether a specific interaction or use of a product was between a range of several options: very difficult, difficult, neutral, easy or very easy.

Likert scales can help customers answer surveys quickly by associating their answer with a specific phrase. Companies can also ask people whether after a customer care call whether the phone call solved their problem with minimal effort. The respondents might then respond on a Likert scale that ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Numeric scale

The numeric scale is similar to the Likert scale, but uses numbers instead of phrases. An example of a numeric scale CES would be to ask respondents to rank the level of effort for an interaction on a scale of 1–9. With one being very difficult and nine being very easy. The numbers in between do not have corresponding words associated with them, so respondents pick the number that most closely aligns with their experience.

Two-question surveys

Companies that want to learn even more about their customers can ask a question either by using the Likert or numeric scale, and then a follow-up question that request specific customer feedback. It should be an open-ended question. The answers to those can help a company with poor results understand if the customer experience is failing across the board or whether there is a specific, recurring issue. They might ask respondents why they chose the response they did, or to describe the experience they are rating. This might provide better context and potentially identify ways to improve future scores. Companies can then analyze the survey responses and identify action points to address the most recent issues.

Emoticon or image-based surveys

Organizations can ask people to select a specific emoticon to describe their experience. These surveys typically use emoticons of faces or thumbs up, down or sideways to give respondents a simple choice. While they are much easier for customers to complete, they do not provide as many deep insights as the other types of surveys.

How to calculate a CES

The CES score is simply an average of responses that is calculated by the total sum of each response divided by how many responses there were. The overall score is somewhere equal to or between the range of possible answers.

Because different organizations can determine which ranges they give their questions, it’s more difficult to identify a CES average that any organization should strive to exceed. Ideally an organization’s CES score is in the top 20% of the scale that they use. So, if it’s a scale of 1–5, having at least an aggregate 4 score.

Organizations need to track CES scores over time, so they can see whether their processes are improving or declining.

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Metrics that can help predict CES scores

Companies can track several metrics that can help executives better understand if they are likely to see an increase or decrease in their CES.

  • Average resolution time

  • Agent touches

  • Request wait time

Average resolution time

This relates to the average amount of time that it takes for a customer to have their customer care issue resolved. It is closely aligned to CES in that people whose resolution time is long are likely to say that their experience took high effort.

Agent touches

This refers to how many customer service team members a customer must encounter to solve their issue. For example, a customer transferred from a service rep to a manager has at least two agent touches. The more agent touches customers encounter the more likely they rate their CES as high effort.

Request wait time

This refers to the amount of time someone must wait for an initial response after a customer creates a ticket or starts an online chat. The more time it takes to receive their first response, the more likely customers rate their experience as high effort.

Ways to improve CES

There are several ways to optimize the customer experience across multiple touchpoints, which will likely improve a company’s CES score.

  • Benchmark and track scores

  • Listen to customers

  • Invest in the customer service experience

  • Build strong customer success teams

  • Strive for real-time resolutions

  • Optimize and personalize customer interactions

Benchmark and track scores

While CES often relates to specific interactions or product usages and is meant to reflect a moment in time, companies should track the history of their CES surveys. That way companies can track their results over time to see whether things are improving or getting worse.

Listen to customers

Companies should survey customers frequently and request their feedback so they understand the customers’ pain points and produce actionable insights. It also helps customers feel like companies care about their experience. Three great times to send CES surveys to customers are:

  1. After a purchase

  2. After a subscription sign-up

  3. After a customer service or customer support touchpoint

These surveys need to ask questions that do not require customers to complete long, complicated forms. If the survey itself is a lot of work, it might create lower overall CES.

Invest in the customer service experience

Companies that equip their customer service teams with the right tools and ability to manage customer complaints creates a low-effort experience during customer service interactions. Customer support teams need empowerment to solve a customer issue quickly and accurately.

For example, customers that must wait to be transferred to a manager who can resolve their issue are likely. Companies should also provide customers with self-service options, like FAQs and a robust knowledge base, so customers can streamline how they get help.

Build strong customer success teams

Companies that charge recurring amounts, like many software-as-a-service providers, often build customer success functions that work with customers to maximize the utility of their solutions. The goal is to help customers use the products so they want to stay with the company when their annual or monthly subscription is up for renewal.

Strive for real-time resolutions

Every second that customers wait for a response to a customer service issue can negatively impact future CES and stop them from making a future purchase. Companies that prioritize immediate responses to customer issues will likely see that those customers score their interactions as less effort in a CES.

Optimize every customer interaction


Companies should focus on improving all touch points on the customer journey. From how they market to prospects to onboarding customers to how they handle customer complaints; all can impact the CES.

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