Customer Effort Score

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy or difficult it is to complete a task. Ask one question after key interactions, get a quick rating, and you know where friction exists.

The standard question is: “How easy was it to [complete this task]?” Customers answer on a scale, typically 1-7, where 1 means “Very difficult” and 7 means “Very easy”.

CES Survey Template

CES measures effort for one specific task. Send it immediately after a support case closes, a purchase completes, onboarding finishes, or any defined task.

CES gives you actionable operational feedback. If customers struggle with a particular process, you know exactly where to reduce friction.

Use this when you want to:

  • Reduce friction in support interactions
  • Optimize processes customers complete repeatedly
  • Compare ease across different touchpoints
  • Track improvements after process simplification
  • Find steps that cause customer effort spikes

Structure:

  • Standard effort question tied to the task: “How easy was it to resolve your issue today?”
  • One conditional follow-up: “What made this difficult?” or “What made this easy?”
  • Optional permission to follow up

When to send it:

Send immediately after task completion while details are fresh. For support, send within hours of case closure. For onboarding, send after the final setup step.

Don’t send CES for tasks that are inherently complex. If closing a support ticket requires five steps because of legitimate process requirements, CES will always be low and the data won’t be actionable.

For overall satisfaction, use CSAT instead. For relationship health, use NPS. CES is best for measuring task-specific friction.

Calculate your CES Score

CES is calculated as the average score across all responses on the 1-7 scale. A score above 5.0 indicates low effort, while scores below 4.0 signal significant friction.

Research from the Corporate Executive Board found that reducing customer effort is more effective at building loyalty than exceeding expectations. High-effort experiences predict churn better than low satisfaction scores. A customer might be satisfied with your product but leave because support is too difficult or onboarding takes too many steps.

Designing a Useful CES Survey

A good CES survey is short and focused on effort. Surveys with 2-3 questions get better response rates.

Keep the structure simple:

  1. Core effort question - one IntervalScale element with a 1-7 rating scale
  2. One conditional “why” question - a multi-line String element for open feedback, tailored to the customer’s score
  3. Optional follow-up permission - “Would it be okay for us to follow up with you?” (Yes/No)

Use Conditional Logic

Ask different follow-up questions based on the customer’s score. High-effort customers need different questions than low-effort ones.

For High-Effort (1-3):

  • Goal: Identify specific friction points and blockers
  • Question examples:
    • “What specific step made this difficult?”
    • “What information or tool were you missing?”
    • “What would have made this task easier?”
    • “Where did you get stuck?”

For Medium-Effort (4):

  • Goal: Understand ambivalence and identify small improvements
  • Question examples:
    • “What could we simplify to make this easier?”
    • “What part of this task was harder than expected?”
    • “What small change would reduce effort?”

Note: Medium-effort feedback reveals opportunities. These customers completed the task but expended more effort than necessary. Small improvements here often yield the highest ROI.

For Low-Effort (5-7):

  • Goal: Validate what’s working and gather best practices
  • Question examples:
    • “What made this easy for you?”
    • “What features or documentation helped most?”
    • “Please briefly describe what worked well.”

Match Questions to CES Type

Always reference the specific task: “What made resolving your issue difficult?” or “What about the checkout process was easy?”

Generic questions like “What could be improved?” don’t tell you which team needs to fix what.

Ask Permission to Follow Up

Add a third question: “Would it be okay for us to follow up with you?”

This lets you:

  • Contact high-effort customers to understand specific blockers
  • Reach out to medium-effort customers to test improvements
  • Ask low-effort customers to document their approach

What to Do With Results

  • Follow up with high-effort customers to understand specific blockers before they give up
  • Use medium-effort feedback to identify quick wins that reduce friction
  • Document low-effort patterns to replicate what works across other processes
  • Watch trends, not single spikes - one high score might be an outlier; a trend is a systemic problem
  • Read the comments - they matter more than the number
  • Map effort to process steps - if one step consistently scores high effort, fix that step

Analyzing CES Results

Focus on patterns, not individual scores. Segment your data to identify where friction exists and what’s causing it.

Segment by touchpoint:

  • Support interactions vs. onboarding vs. checkout
  • Self-service vs. assisted support
  • Web vs. mobile vs. API

If support CES is 4.2 but checkout is 6.1, you know where to focus. Don’t average them together and miss the signal.

Segment by customer type:

  • New vs. existing customers
  • Plan tier or product line
  • Industry or company size

New customers struggling with onboarding is different from enterprise customers hitting API limits. Same low score, different fixes needed.

Track trends over time:

  • Week-over-week or month-over-month changes
  • Before and after process changes
  • Seasonal patterns or product release impacts

A drop from 5.8 to 5.2 over two weeks signals a specific problem. A gradual decline over quarters indicates systemic issues.

Compare channels:

  • Email support vs. chat vs. phone vs. self-service
  • Different support agents or teams
  • Geographic regions with different service models

If chat scores 6.2 but phone scores 4.8, investigate whether it’s the channel itself or the types of issues that escalate to phone.

Link to outcomes:

  • Churn rates for high-effort vs. low-effort customers
  • Time to resolution correlated with effort scores
  • Repeat contact rates by effort level

Research shows 96% of high-effort customers become more disloyal. Measure whether your high-effort segments actually churn more. If not, your friction might be in different places than you think.

CES vs. Other Metrics

CES is best for measuring friction. For satisfaction, use CSAT. For relationship health, use NPS.

CES:

  • Measures ease of completing a task
  • Predicts churn better than satisfaction scores
  • Leading indicator-high effort drives customers away
  • Best for processes customers complete repeatedly

CSAT:

  • Measures satisfaction with a specific interaction
  • Captures emotional reaction, not just effort
  • Use when you care about delight, not just functionality

NPS:

  • Measures likelihood to recommend
  • Predicts customer retention and growth
  • Use for overall relationship health

Using Metrics Together

CES works best as part of a measurement framework, not in isolation. Complementary metrics provide context:

CES + Time to Resolution (TTR): Low effort with long resolution time might mean customers accept waiting when the process is smooth. High effort with fast resolution suggests the process itself is broken, not understaffed.

CES + First Contact Resolution (FCR): High FCR but high effort means you’re solving issues in one interaction, but it’s hard work. Low FCR and high effort compounds the problem-customers struggle and have to come back.

CES + CSAT: High CSAT with medium CES suggests customers appreciate the outcome despite the effort. Low CSAT with low effort indicates the process is smooth but doesn’t solve the actual problem.

CES + NPS: Track whether effort affects loyalty. If low-effort customers have higher NPS but similar retention to high-effort ones, effort might not be your primary churn driver.

Research by XM Institute found that organizations using CES, NPS, and CSAT together see 3x greater year-over-year improvement in retention than those using single metrics.

Recommended combination: Use CES for support and onboarding, CSAT for specific touchpoints (purchases, deliveries), and NPS for quarterly relationship health.

Calculation Variations

Net CES

Similar to NPS methodology, Net CES subtracts detractors from promoters:

Net CES = % Easy (6-7) - % Difficult (1-3)

This produces a score from -100 to +100, highlighting the gap between positive and negative experiences. Use this when you want to emphasize the extremes rather than the middle.

Distribution Analysis

Rather than relying on a single average, examine how responses distribute across the scale:

  • Top Box: Percentage scoring 7 (extremely easy)
  • Top 2 Box: Percentage scoring 6-7 (easy)
  • Bottom Box: Percentage scoring 1 (extremely difficult)
  • Bottom 2 Box: Percentage scoring 1-2 (difficult)

Distribution analysis reveals whether you have a consistent experience or polarized extremes. An average of 5.0 could mean most customers rate you 5, or half rate you 7 and half rate you 3. The distribution tells you which.

Use top box analysis when tracking whether experiences are becoming easier, not just less difficult. Use bottom box to identify the percentage of customers at high risk of churn.

Research Foundation

CES research from the Corporate Executive Board’s 2010 study of 75,000 customer service interactions found:

  • 96% of high-effort customers became more disloyal
  • Only 9% of low-effort customers became disloyal
  • Reducing effort is 5x more effective at building loyalty than exceeding expectations
  • High effort predicts churn better than low satisfaction

Validated across industries: software, telecommunications, financial services, healthcare, and retail.

Key finding: Customers don’t want to work hard. Every additional click, form field, or support escalation increases the risk they’ll leave. Measure effort, reduce friction, keep customers.