Customer Effort Score (CES) is a customer experience survey metric that measures how much effort a customer had to undergo to resolve an issue or use a product/ service. Customers can rate their effort on a 5-point scale or a 7-point scale survey. 

It is a commonly used metric created by Gartner (former CEB Global).  

The CES survey question will ask customers to rate their experience on a scale of “very easy” to “very difficult”. 

• A good CES score indicates that the customer did not endure any or much difficulty to get issues resolved. It can also mean that the product or service was to their liking. 
• A bad CES score indicates that there were greater friction points for a customer to get their issues resolved or use a product or service. 

A CES survey  is typically shared during post-purchase or during post-service interaction to capture immediate experiences. The results are used to improve services or predict churn rates.

You can build an instant CES survey using Merren’s AI Survey Builder. Try it here for free.

Calculating the Gartner Customer Effort Score is very simple. An example of the main CES survey on a 5-point scale is as follows: 

“Rate the ease of interaction with our customer support agent”

1. Very difficult 
2. Difficult
3. Neutral
4. Easy
5. Very easy 

The CES formula is as follows: 

Customer Effort Score = (sum of customer effort score ratings/ total number of survey response)

For example, 100 people responded to your CES survey. The total responses amount to 500, then the final score is 500/100. So on a scale of 1-5, your average CES rating is 5. 

The main focus is to reduce the amount of effort for every interaction and customer. Read more about it on our blog here.

CSAT and CES are different metrics but both measure the customer satisfaction and experience between a customer and a business interaction. 

Type of survey: 

• Customer Satisfaction score measures the satisfaction levels of a customer with a product, feature, service or customer-support interaction. 
• Customer Effort Score will measure the effort level a customer has to undergo during an interaction.  

Type of scale based question:

• The CSAT scale is mostly a 5-point Likert scale. It can also be a 5-star rating or a 5-point emoji scale. 
• The CES survey is originally a 7-point scale. It can also be a simple 5-point effort based scale depending on the goal of the survey. 

Survey touchpoint: 

• The CSAT survey is sent out during various interactions. This includes post-purchase, to gauge immediate feedback on specific experiences or after an interaction with a customer support agent. CSAT is versatile being both relational and transactional in nature.
• The CES survey is only a transactional metric. It is sent out at certain interactions, like customer support interactions or when people try a new feature, a product or service

Want to create an interactive CSAT and CES survey? Sign up for a 14 day free trial here with Merren.

As per Gartner, a high-effort interaction can make customers switch to competitors or channels. High-effort experiences include generic service, repetitive offerings or repeated interactions with customer support teams. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/unveiling-the-new-and-improved-customer-effort-score

The benefit of CES score is to identify when you can lower the effort for your customers. 

1. Encourage repeat purchases: