Customer effort score is about making customer experience effortless and memorable. Customer effort score results can predict future loyalty 40% more accurately than NPS in some contexts. CES surveys help businesses understand how easy or difficult it is for customers to interact with their brand. In this guide, we’ll explain

• Meaning of CES
• How to calculate effort scores
• What is a good effort score
• Best practices to reduce customer effort

What is Customer Effort Score (CES Survey)?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a standard customer experience metric that measures how much effort a customer has to put in to resolve an issue, to purchase a product, or have a service delivered.

The standard CES survey asks:

“How easy was it to interact with our company?” 

Customers respond on a scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree) to indicate effort taken to complete the interaction.

A CES survey also comes with a 1 to Likert rating or 1 to 10 Likert rating scale depending on the format. CES focuses on ease of experience, unlike NPS, which measures loyalty, or CSAT, which gauges satisfaction.

Types of customer effort scores:

• Relationship CES Surveys help track overall satisfaction and loyalty over time.
• Touchpoint CES Surveys concentrate on specific touchpoints of the customer’s journey to identify areas of improvement.
• Post-purchase CES Surveys to learn about purchase experience.
• Website CES Surveys gauge website usability for customers.

Why is CES important? 

The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) discovered that 96% of customers who exert high effort to resolve issues are more disloyal. Their research found that reducing customer effort is a better predictor of customer loyalty than delighting them.

Here’s why CES matters:

• High effort kills loyalty: Customers are 4x more likely to become disloyal after a high-effort experience.
  
  
• Customer retention improves: Reduce friction points in the customer journey.
  
  
• Effort metrics enable optimization: This helps optimize self-service portals, support channels, product interaction and checkout flows. 

How to Calculate Customer Effort Score?

To calculate your Customer Effort Score, use this formula:

CES = (Sum of customer ratings) ÷ (Total number of respondents).

Example: If 100 people responded to your survey on a 7-point scale and the total score is 620, your CES would be:

CES = 620 ÷ 100 = 6.2

Pro Tip: Normalize your scale (e.g., always use a 7-point rating scale) to track changes consistently over time.

Example of a CES survey question:

Here’s a sample CES survey question on various types of Likert scales:

“The company made it easy for me to resolve my issue.”

Rating scale options:

• 1 to 5 (Very Difficult to Very Easy)
  
  
• 1 to 7 (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree)
  
  
• 1 to 10 (Least Effort to Most Effortless)
  

Follow-up (open-ended):

Include an open-ended follow-up question to find out the root cause of high effort. Detailed and candid responses can help brands detect high friction touchpoints.

“What could we have done to make your experience easier?”

When to send a CES survey?

The best time to send a CES survey is immediately after a customer interaction while the experience is still fresh in their mind. This ensures accurate, low-effort feedback.

Here are the ideal moments to trigger a CES survey:

• Post-purchase: Send a CES survey immediately after a transaction or a checkout process to learn about a customer’s purchasing process. This helps measure friction in the buying process and predicts the likelihood of repeat purchases.
• After a support interaction: Ask for feedback following a conversation with your customer service team. The goal is to identify how much effort the customer had to make to resolve an issue or get assistance.
• During product usage: Product teams can use CES surveys to assess if users find it easy to navigate through an app or website. Feedback from these surveys helps uncover friction points and informs improvements in usability, design, and overall product experience. 
• After a self-service: Send CES surveys to assess the ease of use of self-service options. This data can help make self-service touchpoints better and seamless, especially for people who may find it difficult to use digital self-service touchpoints.

3 Types of CES Surveys

CES surveys typically ask a single question to evaluate the ease of a customer’s experience. Here are the three most common formats:

1. Likert rating scales:

A numerical scale (usually 5-point rating scale or 7-point rating scale) where customers rate their experience from “extremely easy” to “extremely difficult.”. This format is widely used and provides straightforward, quantifiable data.

• Lower numbers indicate less effort.
• Higher numbers indicate a frustrating experience.

2. Emoticon or symbol ratings:

Emoticon ratings use emojis to indicate low effort or high effort. Star rating format indicates the level of effort. In either of the visual rating scales, use open-ended questions to capture reasons behind the selected rating. To collect numerical data from the visual scale, assign numerical values to each emoji or star to calculate an average effort score. 

• A happy face or 5-star rating = low effort
• A sad face or 1-star rating = high effort

3. Text based ratings:

This version uses agreement-based statements, such as:

“The support team made it easy to resolve my issue.”

Respondents then choose from options like “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” on a 1 to 5 point rating scale. This format adds clarity to the survey and provides qualitative insight into customer sentiment.

What is a Good Customer Effort Score?

A good Customer Effort Score (CES) indicates that customers find it easy to do business with your brand. CES is typically measured on a 5-point rating scale, 7-point rating scale or 10-point rating scale. On any scale, higher scores reflect lower effort.

However, there is no universal benchmark. The ideal score varies depending on your industry and customer expectations. What’s important is to track your internal CES trends and work toward consistent improvement.

On a 10-point rating scale, aim for a score of 7 or above. On a 7-point rating scale, aim for a 5 and above to ensure your customer interactions are smooth and friction-free.

Why should you measure customer effort scores?

Measuring CES helps you identify where customers experience friction in their journey—whether during support, onboarding, or product use. Studies show that customers who experience low-effort interactions are:

• 94% more likely to repurchase
  
  
• 37% less expensive to serve
  
  
• 40% less likely to make repeat complaints
  
  
• 54% less likely to switch service channels
  

6 Ways to Improve Your Customer Effort Scores

Here are some ways to reduce effort for customers across multiple touchpoints:

1. Publish CES surveys with Merren immediately after a purchase, interaction with a support staff, onboarding and to assess ease of a certain process
2. You can discover high churn rates from high-effort touchpoints. Use this data to streamline this process whether using AI tools or allocating resources.  
3. In case people want self-service options, offer AI-driven smart bots to answer intricate questions directly. Offer detailed FAQ pages, free guides or How-To tutorials. 
4. Provide humanized support to close a feedback loop sooner. Most people want to talk to a human to solve an issue faster. This is particularly true among older citizens who may not know how to interact with a chatbot. 
5. Optimize segments in your website. If it is an ecommerce store, optimize checkout pages for faster payments and checkout options. Optimize mobile applications for better navigation and speedy UI. Clear out broken links and redirects 
6. Train your team to minimize transfer and wait times. Empower them to handle cases immediately without transferring calls. 

How to Create a CES Survey?

Here are four tips to build an effective CES survey:

1. Keep it simple and relevant

Keep the questions simple and easy to understand even after survey translation. Make sure the question relates to the most recent interaction or touchpoint (during the exchange or product-usage learning process). 

“How easy was it to complete your purchase today?”

One can also create a simple CES survey using pre-designed and tested templates. This makes it easier for marketers to choose and customize as per survey needs.

2. You don’t have to use the word ‘effort’

CES measures effort but you can reframe questions using terms like “easy” or “smooth.”. Example, ‘How easy was it to use the <product>’. The answers can range from ‘very easy’, ‘easy.’ to ‘very difficult’ at the other end of the spectrum.

3.Choose the right response format

You can use:

• Numerical Scales (1 to 5, 1 to 7, or 1 to 10)
  
  
• Emoticons or symbols (happy to sad faces, thumbs-up/down)
  
  
• Text-based options (Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree)
  

Pair the survey with a follow-up open-ended question like:

“What could we have done to make this easier?”

This helps capture qualitative feedback for deeper insights.

4. Choose the right survey channels

To identify if most of your customers undergo high effort, you need an equivalent amount of data. Choose the right survey channels to collect effort metrics. Merren brings WhatsApp surveys, Facebook messenger surveys, chatbot and email surveys that bring you a high response rate. Merren’s survey templates are compatible across multiple devices and platforms.

Is Customer Effort Score Along Enough?

Although Customer Effort Score is useful, relying solely on it may not be enough. Use Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) to get a comprehensive view of the customer experience. It’s also crucial to understand the reasons behind low satisfaction scores to pinpoint areas for improvement.

NPS and CES are two different metrics used to measure customer satisfaction. Net promoter score gauges overall loyalty by asking about the likelihood of recommending a company. CES measures ease of experience for specific tasks. Both provide important insights into customer behavior and satisfaction.

CES vs NPS vs CSAT: what’s the difference?

CES and CSAT are customer experience metrics that measure different aspects of a buyer’s interaction with a company. CES gauges the effort required to complete a task, while CSAT measures overall satisfaction with the entire experience. Both metrics offer valuable insights into improving the customer experience.

Common Mistakes to Avoid with CES Surveys

• Avoid colouring emoji rating scales, example green for low effort emoji and red for high effort emoji. Colours are associated with personal bias. Keep visual elements uniform in terms of colour and let people choose the correct metric. 
• Avoid relying merely on a CES survey to assess effort. Use transactional net promoter score (tNPS) at correct touchpoints to assess transactional based satisfaction levels.
• Combine NPS surveys and CSAT surveys to get a complete picture of a customer journey. 
• Not segmenting CES scores by human-based interaction or product-driven interaction. A customer may rate a product- based interaction as a high effort. The same customer may rate low-effort after an interaction with a humanized support staff. Precise CES metric can pinpoint high effort areas. Don’t mix touchpoints. 
• Sharing late CES surveys after an interaction. The context of the interaction can get lost. Oftentimes, the support team will request customers to rate the interaction while they are on the call with the customer. This hand-holding technique nudges the customer to offer ratings immediately.

Conclusion

Customer Effort Score is more than just a number. It is a reflection of how easy (or difficult) it is for customers to do business with you. A well-timed CES survey can highlight the exact pain points causing churn or dissatisfaction. By improving your CES, you’re not just making things easier—you’re earning trust, loyalty, and long-term business.

Minimize customer effort with Merren, an AI-driven customer experience platform. Create interactive surveys that can help you close the customer feedback loop immediately. Sign up and get a 14 day all-access free trial.