Explore everything you need to know about the customer effort score.
Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes is critical if you truly want to understand their experience with your company.
Calculating the Customer Effort Score (CES) allows you to measure just how much effort your customers are putting in when interacting with your business.
By surveying customers and crunching some numbers, you gain insight into how easy (or difficult) you’re making it for people to get service, sales, and support.
High CES shows you’re making clients work too hard. Low CES demonstrates you’re minimizing customer effort.
A. What is customer effort score (CES) and why it matters?
The customer effort score (CES) measures how much effort customers feel to resolve an issue or get what they need from your business.
This score shows how easy and convenient your customer service is.
- CES is measured on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 7, with 1 indicating very low effort and easy service, and 5 or 7 indicating high effort was required.
- The lower the CES, the better the customer experience. A score of 3 and below is considered good.
- It matters because the easier you make it for customers, the happier they will be. Higher CES leads to lower customer satisfaction and risks losing business.
So in short, CES allows you to quantify how easy or challenging your customers perceive your service to be. Tracking it over time shows if you are improving.
B. Why does customer effort score matter?
1. Identifying pain points
CES helps find where customers struggle in their experience. It lets businesses simplify processes and smooth the journey.
2. Clear areas for improvement
Voice of customer analysis provides clarity on CES. It shows areas for improvement. It guides businesses to improve customer satisfaction by fixing pain points.
3. Prioritizing impactful fixes
By measuring customer effort, businesses can prioritize fixes. This will improve the overall customer experience.
4. Bench-marking against competitors
CES lets businesses compare their customer experience with competitors. It helps them know their market position and find ways to stand out.
5. Predicting loyalty and repeat business
High CES scores often mean loyal customers. They lead to repeat business. So, CES is a key metric for predicting and building strong customer relationships
CES, or customer effort score, reveals customer perceptions. It helps you find and fix friction points. This drives satisfaction, retention, and growth.
Now that you know what it is and why it’s important, let’s look at what makes a good score.
C. What is an ideal effort score?
When it comes to customer effort score (CES), there’s no definitive answer for what constitutes an “ideal” score. A lot depends on your industry, service type, and specific business goals.
However, most experts agree that a good target CES is under 2.0.
- A score under 2.0 indicates that your customers find it easy to do business with you. They don’t have to put in a ton of effort to get an issue resolved or find what they need.
- As a benchmark, many leading companies have an average CES of 1.5 or lower. Top performers in industries like tech support or customer service may have scores in the 1.2 – 1.3 range.
- A CES above 3.0 is a red flag that customers are struggling with. It likely means complex processes, confusing interfaces, or unhelpful reps.
While under 2.0 is a reasonable goal, don’t get hung up on a specific number. Focus on continuous incremental improvement. Aim to lower your CES over time.
Even small gains like going from 2.3 to 2.1 mean customers are expending less effort.
And remember, CES is just one piece of the puzzle. Use it with metrics like CSAT and NPS. They will help you see the full customer experience you provide.
D. When to use customer effort score
The CES is a call center metric you can use to gauge how easy – or difficult – it is for customers to get issues resolved with your company.
Use the CES throughout the customer journey to identify pain points and opportunities to improve.
1. After purchases
Check the post-purchase experience. Ask customers to rate the effort in buying, paying, onboarding, or setting up your product or service.
2. Following support interactions
Measure how much effort it took to resolve an issue via phone, email, chat, self-service, or social media support.
3. During account changes
Assess how hard tasks are, like updating payment info, canceling a subscription, or modifying an order.
4. Upon renewal or re-purchase
Understand the effort involved in continuing or expanding the customer relationship.
5. Across channels
Compare CES scores for different channels to double down on the ones creating seamless experiences.
No matter when you collect your CES data, the most important next step is taking action on the customer feedback.
Find friction points. Prioritize fixes for the biggest impact. Then, track CES to measure improvements.
By timing surveys and improving the process with CES metrics, you can reduce customer effort and boost satisfaction in the long run.
E. Customer effort score questions
A crucial part of calculating the CES is asking the right questions in your survey.
The questions should be simple and focused on the effort the customer had to expend to resolve an issue or meet their needs.
Some sample CES survey questions include:
- How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?
- How easy was it to handle your issue with our company?
- How difficult was it to get the service you needed today?
Use a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 7 where 1 means very low effort and 5 or 7 means very high effort. This makes it easy for customers to respond. You want a score closer to 1.
The exact wording can be adjusted, but the focus should stay on the effort involved from the customer’s perspective. You want to know if they had to call multiple times, get transferred, explain their problem repeatedly, etc.
This indicates how easy or challenging your customer service experience is for them.
Sometimes a follow-up question can provide additional context, such as:
What particular area was most time-consuming or frustrating?
This gives you insight into pain points.
Keep your CES survey short, usually no more than 3 questions. You want a high response rate so you can start making positive changes in areas that need improvement.
This metric is all about understanding the customer experience from their point of view.
F. Customer effort score calculations
1. Assigning values to responses
To calculate a CES using the customer effort score scale, you first need to assign point values to each possible survey response.
A typical scale is:
- Very easy = 100 points
- Easy = 80 points
- Neither easy nor difficult = 60 points
- Difficult = 40 points
- Very difficult = 20 points
The higher the points, the less effort required by the customer to resolve their issue or get their question answered.
2. Averaging survey responses
After scoring each response, total the points. Then, divide by the number of survey responses to get the average customer effort score.
The sum of CES scores/no of responses
For example, if you had these five survey responses:
- Easy (80 points)
- Very easy (100 points)
- Difficult (40 points)
- Neither easy nor difficult (60 points)
- Easy (80 points)
You would add up the point values (80 + 100+ 40+ 60+80= 360 points) and divide by the number of responses (360/5 = 72 points average).
The maximum possible score is 100, so this fictional company has some room for improvement, with an average CES of 72.
3. Tracking over time
The most valuable use of CES is to track it over time.
This allows you to see the impact of any changes you make to improve customer experience. Focus on the trends rather than individual data points.
G. Significance of customer effort score in contact centers
CES is crucial in contact centers as it directly reflects the ease or difficulty customers face during interactions.
A low CES means streamlined processes, boosting customer satisfaction. A high CES points to areas needing improvement in service and efficiency.
Measure your CES by analysing and listening your customer calls.
Enthu.AI, a conversation intelligence software, significantly contributes to CES by monitoring and providing you detailed call analysis.
Enthu.AI helps you identify pain points, optimize processes, and ultimately reduce customer churn and customer effort for a smoother experience.
Conclusion
So, where does this leave you?
I hope you now understand the customer effort score. You know what it is, why it matters, and how to calculate it. Use it to improve your customers’ experiences.
By regularly surveying clients and tracking CES over time, you gain insight into the ease and convenience of doing business with you.
This allows you to identify pain points and make positive changes.
Rather than guessing what customers think, you can leverage hard data to guide CX decisions. Ultimately, the more effortless you make it for customers, the happier they will be.
That pays off in the form of increased NPS and positive word-of-mouth.
So implement these tips, CES score calculation regularly, and start optimizing. Your customers will thank you.
1. How is customer effort score calculated?
The Customer Effort Score is calculated by asking customers a simple question like “How easy was it to get what you needed?” and having them rate it on a scale. The formula is straightforward: The percentage of customers who found it “easy” or “very easy.”
3. What is a good CES score?
A decent CES (Customer Effort Score) usually varies between 0 and 100, with higher ratings indicating better customer experiences. A score closer to 100 indicates that customers will put in less effort to achieve their goals, fostering customer satisfaction and loyalty.
3. What is the difference between NPS and customer effort score?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric that analyzes overall customer loyalty and satisfaction based on the likelihood of recommendation. The Customer Effort Score (CES) measures the ease of customer experiences. NPS focuses on sentiment, whereas CES evaluates the ease of engagement.
4. What is the customer effort score?
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy it is for customers to use a product or service. It measures the effort for customers to resolve issues, buy, or get support. This affects their satisfaction and loyalty.
