Customer Effort Score (CES): The Ultimate Guide for 2024

In the battle for customer loyalty, companies are increasingly realizing that minimizing friction is just as critical, if not more so, than maximizing delight.

According to Gartner, 96% of customers who have a high-effort service interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience. And Forrester reports that "customer service drives more than two-thirds of customer loyalty, outperforming brand and price combined."

One of the most effective ways to quantify and improve a customer‘s ease of experience is Customer Effort Score (CES). First introduced in 2010 by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), CES has gained rapid adoption as a KPI to drive customer retention and business growth.

In this ultimate guide, we‘ll cover everything you need to know about CES in 2024—including the latest research, benchmarks, best practices, and case studies. By the end, you‘ll have a clear roadmap for using CES to optimize your customer experience and drive bottom-line impact. Let‘s get started!

What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a customer experience survey methodology that measures how much effort a customer has to exert to complete an action or resolve an issue with a company. CES surveys typically ask the customer to rate the ease of their experience on a numeric scale (like 1-5 or 1-7) or using emoticons.

CES differs from other popular CX metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures a customer‘s overall loyalty to a brand, and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), which captures sentiment about a specific interaction. CES specifically hones in on the level of effort required by the customer.

The concept behind CES is that customers are more loyal to companies that are easy to do business with. Removing friction and frustration from interactions helps turn customers into raving fans that buy more, stay longer, and recommend you to others.

Harvard Business Review reports that 94% of customers who report low effort express an intention to repurchase, and 88% say they will increase their spending. Conversely, 81% of customers who have a hard time solving problems report an intention to spread negative word of mouth.

The Evolution of Customer Effort Score

The idea of measuring customer effort originated in a 2010 HBR article titled "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers". The authors‘ research found that exceeding customer expectations has minimal impact on loyalty compared to simply meeting their needs quickly and easily.

The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) then developed CES as a way to quantify a customer‘s effort and tie service interactions to concrete business outcomes like repurchase and increased spend. Their original CES survey question was:

How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?

1. Far less than I expected
2. Less than I expected
3. About what I expected
4. More than I expected
5. Far more than I expected

In 2013 CEB (now Gartner) released an updated version called CES 2.0 which changed the question to:

The company made it easy for me to handle my issue:

1. Strongly Disagree
2. Disagree
3. Somewhat Disagree
4. Neither Agree or Disagree
5. Somewhat Agree
6. Agree
7. Strongly Agree

They found this phrasing increased the predictive power of the metric. Other companies have tweaked the CES question over the years to fit their specific needs and audience. But the core idea remains the same—measuring the ease of the customer experience on a numeric scale.

How to Calculate Customer Effort Score

To calculate your Customer Effort Score, use this formula:

CES = (Total sum of customer effort scores) / (Total # of survey responses)

For example, let‘s say you received 200 responses to your CES survey with the following distribution:

10 responses of "Strongly Disagree" (score of 1)
20 responses of "Disagree" (score of 2)
50 responses of "Somewhat Disagree" (score of 3)
20 responses of "Neither Agree or Disagree" (score of 4)
50 responses of "Somewhat Agree" (score of 5)
40 responses of "Agree" (score of 6)
10 responses of "Strongly Agree" (score of 7)

To calculate CES:

(10×1) + (20×2) + (50×3) + (20×4) + (50×5) + (40×6) + (10×7) = 840 total
840 / 200 total responses = 4.2

In this case, a CES of 4.2 on a scale of 1-7 indicates that the average customer is having a somewhat difficult experience that requires more effort than it should. There‘s significant room for improvement to make interactions more seamless.

What is a Good Customer Effort Score?

So what‘s considered a "good" Customer Effort Score? The short answer is—it depends. CES can vary widely by industry, customer segment, and touchpoint.

In general, a good score to aim for is at least a 5 on a 7-point scale (or 4 on a 5-point scale). Here are some helpful benchmarks from CustomerGauge‘s 2022 CX Benchmarks Report:

But don‘t get too caught up on comparing yourself to other companies. The key is to continuously measure your own CES over time and work on improving it. Even a small uptick can lead to big gains in retention and spend.

Tracking your CES can also help you understand how you stack up against competitors. If you‘re scoring significantly lower, that‘s a red flag that customers may jump ship to a company that offers an easier experience.

CES Survey Best Practices

To get the most actionable insights from your CES program:

1. Timing is everything. Distribute your CES survey immediately after an interaction while it‘s still fresh in the customer‘s mind. This could be after completing a purchase, resolving a support ticket, using a product feature for the first time, etc.

2. Be specific. Customize your CES question(s) to the particular interaction you‘re measuring. For example:

• [Company] made it easy for me to find the product information I was looking for.
• The checkout process was quick and simple.
• It was easy to get my issue resolved by customer support.

3. Keep it short. One question is ideal, two at most. The lower the effort to complete your survey, the higher the response rate!

4. Amplify with verbatims. Include an open-ended question after the CES rating scale to capture qualitative details on points of friction. For example: "What made this experience difficult?" or "How could we have made this easier for you?"

5. Slice and dice. Analyze your CES data by customer segment, touchpoint, and other relevant variables. This will help pinpoint the interactions causing the most effort for different types of customers.

6. Take action. Share CES insights cross-functionally and assign owners to fix the biggest issues. Communicate back to customers once you‘ve made improvements to close the loop.

Reducing Customer Effort: Proven Strategies

Once you‘ve collected your CES baseline, how do you actually move the needle? Here are some of the most effective ways to systematically reduce customer effort across your organization:

Strategy	Benefit	Example
Personalization	Tailored experiences require less effort for the customer to accomplish their goals	Amazon‘s recommendation engine suggests relevant products based on browsing history, reducing search effort
Proactive Support	Anticipating and resolving issues before the customer has to put in effort	Telco company texts customer to alert of upcoming service outage and automatically applies account credit
First Contact Resolution	Fully resolving the customer‘s issue the first time they contact you, eliminating repeat effort	Apple Genius Bar equips techs to diagnose hardware/software issues and offers loaner devices to minimize return trips
Omnichannel Service	Seamless transitions between channels like phone, email, chat, social media	Nordstrom allows customers to switch between channels mid-transaction without repeating information
Self-Service Options	Empowering customers to find answers and solve issues on their own	Canva‘s online design school offers video tutorials on using their platform to create professional graphics

The common thread across all of these strategies is making it as quick, easy and painless as possible for customers to do business with you. Every extra step, repeat contact, or channel switch adds effort and erodes loyalty. Look for opportunities to simplify and streamline the end-to-end journey.

CES Success Stories

Here are some standout examples of companies that have improved CES and business outcomes:

• Radial, a multinational e-commerce company, increased CES from 2.56 to 3.84 (out of 5) for its outsourced customer service. By empowering frontline agents to handle a wider variety of contacts without escalating, Radial reduced customer transfers by 20% and increased sentiment by 43.4% while reducing cost to serve.

• Mynt, the #1 digital financial services provider in the Philippines, improved CES from 2.4 to 3.8 (out of 5) by introducing in-app self service options for the most common customer inquiries like checking balances, resetting passwords, and disputing charges. As a result, inbound contacts decreased 30%, freeing up agents to focus on more complex issues.

• DoorDash increased CES by 6% for its restaurant delivery platform by implementing AI-powered chatbots to triage and resolve routine customer inquiries like "Where‘s my order?". CSAT and contact deflection also increased while handling time decreased. DoorDash‘s CES for dasher onboarding also rose 4% thanks to a revamped online orientation process.

The key takeaway is that CES improvements have a ripple effect across the entire customer experience. When you reduce effort at one touchpoint, it often impacts metrics at other touchpoints in a virtuous cycle.

Wrap Up

Customers are gravitating to companies that make their lives easier, not harder. Forrester sums it up nicely: "To succeed in this new world, companies must make customer effort a key KPI and tailor experiences to reduce it."

By measuring Customer Effort Score and systematically working to simplify interactions across touchpoints, you will drive measurable increases in retention, loyalty, spend, and cost to serve—all of which flow to the bottom line.

So what are you waiting for? Start surveying your customers, dig into the insights, and take action on the biggest opportunities to reduce effort. Your customers (and your investors) will thank you!