Customer effort score is a metric is a simple survey to measure how easy it is for people to interact with your company and solve their friction points. People rate the scale based on ‘very easy’ to ‘very difficult’ to indicate their level of effort. In this blog, we’ll cover everything you need to know about CES. Plus, we’ll explore the connection between CES and other popular metrics like NPS and CSAT.
The 2 types of customer effort score scales in CX:
The score typically ranges from 1-7 or 1-5 point scale. Usually higher scores mean that your customers take less effort to go through an interaction or use a product. Low CES scores can pinpoint areas for improvement in customer experience. To identify areas of high effort in customer interactions, customer service organizations can use CES with relation to operational metrics. The operational metrics include as repeat calls to the customer support team, transfers, searching for helpline numbers and channel switching. This will help them find out the high pain-points during an interaction. The main aim is to deliver an effortless experience for every consumer base.
When should you send a CES survey?
The right time to capture a response is after an interaction. This puts less cognitive effort on people while the experience is fresh in their minds.
- Share a CES survey right after a customer made a purchase from your brand. This is a great way to understand the amount of effort they have put in to make a purchase. This will gauge their overall experience during the transaction. The metrics also indicate the probability of their future purchases with your brand.
- Seek feedback immediately after a buyer has had an interaction with a customer service representative. The aim is to find out how much trouble a person might have taken to solve a pain point, get a support ticket resolved etc.
- Product teams can find high friction touchpoints on a website or an app’s user interface. A CES survey will find out if a user can navigate across the interface and detect their frustration metrics. The responses can help improve product usage, value, design and usability.
Types of CES data you can collect:
- 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 gather feedback on the purchase experience.
- Website CES Surveys gauge website usability for customers.
How was the CES metric developed?
The Customer Effort Score was created by CEB Global (currently known as Gartner), a consulting firm. Customer effort means that the amount of effort a customer has to put will determine their loyalty towards the brand. The focus should be to make touchpoints and interactions , a low effort experience. It was found that reducing effort is more effective than exceeding expectations. CES ranges from 1 to 7, with 1 being “very difficult” and 7 being “very easy.”. Gartner also reported that the high NPS scores belong to companies that are top performing and focus on low customer effort scores versus high-effort service interaction.
There are 2 types of CES Questions you can use
The CES survey question is a powerful tool for gauging how much effort customers require to complete tasks or interact with support teams. Reducing friction improves customer loyalty and retention. Identifying high-effort touchpoints allows businesses to take action and create a low-effort experience for their customers. There are two ways to capture responses over this metric.
Likert scale:
The likert scale offers a 5-point or a 7-point number on a scale. It is a single yet simple question after an interaction. People have to choose a response from “extremely easy” to “extremely difficult”. They mostly only contain numbers. There is an instruction on the survey on how to choose a response. Lower numbers indicate ease of use, higher numbers indicate a difficult experience.
Emoticon or symbol ratings:
This is a straightforward questionnaire that will showcase three emotions indicating experience levels. People have to choose from a happy-neutral-sad emoticon. Happy face indicates lesser effort, a sad face indicates higher effort. You can also use common symbols that people usually understand such as a star rating. Along with the ratings, you can also ask for open-ended responses for why a respondent might choose a certain rating. This will offer more details on their experience.
While calculating scores from a star or emoticon rating, you might want to assign an internal number for each of the images. Assign the higher number for the sad face. Then calculate the average number of people who selected each face. A high number shows that people have more trouble accessing your products/services.
Text based ratings:
Text based ratings ask responses based on “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree”. People can indicate the level of effort in a text based rating scale as well. For example: ‘The support team made it easy for you to solve this issue:’. People can choose on a 5-point text rating of “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.
How to calculate the CES score?
Calculating CES involves asking customers to rate the effort required to complete a task or interaction on a 1-5 scale. The average score is then used to determine the overall CES. CES can be combined with other metrics, such as NPS, for deeper understanding of customer experience.
Here is the formula for the customer effort score calculation:
In the image below is the formula for calculating the ultimate indicators of customer effort score. The formula is the sum of all the CES scores divided by the total number of survey responses. The result will indicate the amount of effort your user base puts in to interact with your business. Analytics from CES surveys can help identify and address such customer feedback, improving retention and loyalty.
What Is a Good Customer Effort Score?
A good customer effort score indicates that customers find it easy to do business with your company. CES uses a scale of 0-10, with 0 being very difficult and 10 being very easy. Aim for a score of 7 or higher to improve customer loyalty and satisfaction. However, there is no universal benchmark on the good score. It depends on how a company can make transactions seamless for their client base.
Why is it important to measure the CES score?
Using a customer effort score question, businesses can identify where customers experience unnecessary difficulty or a lot of effort for any verbal exchange. This helps in improving the customer journey and reducing pain points. A high customer effort score translates to satisfied customers and increases loyalty. While NPS and CSAT are standard metrics to understand customer satisfaction, the customer effort score benchmark is of equal importance.
Measure & improve customer effort metric:
To gauge how much effort customers have to expend while interacting with your business, you can use the Customer Effort Score, a customer experience metric. High CES scores result in disloyal customers that churn more easily. To mitigate this risk, CES surveys are useful for identifying areas of the journey where there is friction or where customers need more support from your team. Strategies such as offering self-service options or providing timely chat support in real-time help ensure low-effort interactions.
Advantages of using customer effort score survey
CES surveys allow identifying pain points in the customer experience and can lead to targeted improvements such as reducing wait times, simplifying processes, and improving communication. Good CES results indicate that customers are satisfied with their experience. Implementing CES surveys alongside NPS and CSAT scores can give a comprehensive view of the customer experience for the respective touchpoint. However, it was noted that the positive responses captured via CES score could determine customer loyalty greater than NPS by at least 40%.
As per data, 94% percent of customers opt for a repeat purchase with an organisation that focuses on creating minimal friction and effort for patrons. A low effort interaction also slashes cost up to 37% vis-à-vis a high effort interaction. This also reduces repeat calls up to 40% and prevents channel switching up to 54%.
How to create a CES survey question: quick guide
Similar to most survey questions, here are some points to note if you want to bring authentic CES results from an interaction.
1. Focus on being simple and direct
Use simple-to-understand words and be direct with the approach. Make sure that the question pertains to the immediate interaction. Focus on learning about their effort during the exchange or product-usage learning process. 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. Not necessary to use the word ‘effort’
While CES denotes customer effort, there is no requirement to make it obvious. One can create a question in the following manner. 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. Use scales, texts or emoticons
To make the scale question a little interesting, one can use emojis, thumbs-up symbols, or smiles with expressions. The scale can be rated with an ‘agree or disagree’ distinction. One can also use numerical from 1 to 7 labelled respectively. Example: <The customer rep solved my issue>, ranked between ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree.’
Is Only Using Customer Effort Score Surveys Enough?
Although Customer Effort Score is useful, relying solely on it may not be enough. Incorporating other metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) can provide a more comprehensive view of the customer experience. It’s also crucial to understand the reasons behind low satisfaction scores to pinpoint areas for improvement.
What’s the difference between NPS vs CES?
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.
What’s the difference between CES vs CSAT?
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.
Does CES Work for Self-Service Channels?
CES surveys can effectively measure customer effort in self-service channels such as automated phone systems, chatbots, and knowledge bases. Sending surveys after a user’s interactions can provide insight into areas for improvement and reduce frustration. Tracking CES scores is a valuable tool for optimizing self-service channels.
Conclusion
Customer effort score is a good indicator of comprehending the difficulty your customer has to go through during an interaction. It also indicates the difficulty level of a learning curve when it comes to a product demo. The end goal is to create a seamless user experience. This includes capturing the effort a customer will take to go through a certain touchpoint. Businesses can use various customer satisfaction metrics to capture high pain points in the ecosystem and address them willingly. One can deploy CES questions via AMP interactive email, WhatsApp surveys or website chatbots. A good experience is the one where the customers spend little effort while seeking solutions for their problems. The modern day marketer can use a template based survey questions to create simple CES surveys.
