Customer Effort Score (CES) and How to Use It

November 14, 2024

Effort matters. 

When a customer can book appointments online, opt-in for automated appointment reminders, and pay quickly with their preferred payment method, they are more likely to be loyal repeat customers. But when they have to contact a business multiple times or jump through hoops to make a purchase, they are far less likely to return.

Reducing the effort required to do business with your company starts with measuring the effort required. Read on to learn more about customer effort scores and how to use them.

What is the Customer Effort Score (CES)?

Customer effort score (CES) is a metric that measures the ease of use of a company’s product, service, or support. It is used to assess how easy or difficult it is for customers to accomplish key tasks, like scheduling an appointment or resolving an issue with customer support. 

CES is measured by asking customers to respond to a survey. For example, a customer effort survey might ask, “On a scale from very easy to very difficult, how easy was it to interact with (company)?”

CES is one metric to measure customer service, but not the only one: customer satisfaction (CSAT) score and net promoter score (NPS) are also important data points for customer-facing operations. These items are highly related but not interchangeable. For example, a customer can be thrilled with their provider’s skills and service (high CSAT) but feel that it’s too difficult to book appointments or pay their bill (poor CES).

Customer effort score is important because it helps businesses:

  • Get real-time feedback about problem areas: learn from each customer interaction and address the process steps that introduce friction
  • Improve self-service channels: allow clients and prospects to do more through self-service portals, apps, and automated messages
  • Make customer support teams more efficient: use CES data to address issues that otherwise result in support calls, which frees up customer support time for other work
  • Build customer loyalty: low-effort companies see greater customer loyalty and higher repurchase rates, according to Gartner research

Measuring Customer Effort Score

At its most basic level, CES is measured by asking customers about the effort required to complete their desired tasks. Companies can measure the average customer effort and the share of positive responses to set a benchmark, set realistic goals, and track changes over time.

If you use a different scale, such as 1-5 or 1-3, adjust the formula to the range that you define as a positive response. If your measurement system uses visuals like emoticons or icons—more on that below—it will need to be translated into a numerical scale for measurement purposes. The most positive response will become the highest number (3, 5, or 7), and the most negative one will become the lowest number (1).

HOW to measure effort

Regardless of the exact scale, the question measuring customer effort score should be neutral and clear. The simpler the question, the higher the response rate.

Open-ended “write-in” feedback from customers is incredibly valuable, but it should be optional. This will help maximize response rates for the primary CES prompt, while providing a feedback mechanism for customers who want to share more.

There are several ways to ask about customer effort. Here are a few of the most common:

Likert scale

The Likert scale is perhaps the most common way to measure CES. This is a 5- or 7-point rating scale that ranges from strongly agree to strongly disagree, with a neutral option in the middle. It measures the user’s sentiment toward a given statement, such as “Skedulo made it easy for me to handle my issue.” This question can be customized to match the workflow so the wording is different at different steps, e.g. measuring CES when scheduling an appointment vs. when interacting with customer support about a problem.

Numerical score

Companies can measure CES with a simple numerical scale that ranges from 1: very easy to 7: very difficult. Create a brief survey with a prompt like “On a scale from 1-7, how easy was it to use this feature?” and provide a clearly labeled scale. There should be a neutral option in the middle, e.g. 4: neither easy nor difficult.

Emoticons

An emoticon scale is one of the fastest and most visual ways to measure CES. In response to a question like “How easy was it to solve your problem today?” customers choose from a range of 3-5 emoticons, with a sad/angry face at one end and a happy face at the other. The happy face(s) will count as “easy” responses for CES scoring. 

WHEN to measure effort

Encourage survey responses by asking the question at the right time. Ideally, you can use automated systems that send the CES survey when specific conditions are met. For example, when a field service technician marks a job complete, the system automatically sends a brief CES survey based on the change in job status.

It’s common to use a CES survey to:

Measure interactions that led to a purchase. Learn from new customers about what led them to choose your company/service. Use a survey on a post-purchase page or in new client onboarding materials to measure CES while the topic is fresh on customers’ minds. 

Measure service interactions. Service interactions may occur in person, like field service jobs and home healthcare appointments, or remotely, like calling or emailing customer support. For each type of service, make it part of the service workflow to ask about customer effort. For example, in the “ticket closed” email after a customer support interaction, include a brief request to “rate how easy it was to resolve your issue today.” When the job is onsite with the customer, this can be part of collecting the customer’s signature or delivering the invoice. 

Measure UI and UX effectiveness. When product teams are testing the UI and UX of their platform, CES is incredibly useful. Product teams can benchmark CES for the current UI/UX, and then measure CES afterward to see what has changed. If users report an easier experience after the change, you are heading in the right direction. (Use the same wording and process triggers for before-and-after testing for best results!)

WHERE to measure effort

Whenever possible, conduct the CES survey on the same channel where the interaction occurred: self-service, in-person, via chat, phone, email, in-app, in a web portal, etc. By asking for feedback in the same platform, companies encourage more timely responses, which leads to higher response rates and more actionable feedback.

In some cases, the CES survey can be delivered within the workflow itself, like a scheduling system with built-in feedback mechanism. In other cases, an update from one area (e.g. customer support ticketing system) will trigger a CES survey sent from another system (e.g. automatic invoicing or communications system).

Don’t overlook the importance of the mobile experience. Make sure the survey is user-friendly and mobile-optimized for small screen sizes and mobile browsers.

How to use CES to improve business operations

First things first, tailor CES measurement to your business and goals. Companies with very different service types may choose to deliver CES surveys at different times or use different wording. For example, a plumbing company may be more comfortable using the emoticon scale to measure their appointment scheduling platform than a healthcare provider would be. Some types of work, like repairing utility lines, involve time-sensitive and dangerous tasks; a utility company may opt to deliver a CES survey for routine services but not for emergency repair situations.

With your business goals in mind—and CES data in hand—you can start to use the data:

Review and share the data

Review customer effort scores regularly, and make note of trends over time. This helps track changes—good or bad—in CES that reflect operational changes. 

Operations leaders should also review the open-ended feedback provided in CES surveys. These responses help uncover specific pain points for customers and common bottlenecks in the process. If the company receives a significant amount of open-ended feedback, use automated alerts or routing to send notable responses to the right team. For example, a solar company with separate installation and consulting divisions chooses to route all feedback containing “installation” to the appropriate side of the business.

Prioritize and act on specific issues

Time and resources are always limited. When starting out with customer effort, begin with the steps in the workflow you are most interested in or concerned about. If you are most concerned about new customer onboarding, ask for CES feedback immediately after the onboarding process; if you are concerned about customer support, prioritize getting CES feedback right after interactions with customer service teams.

Operations teams should use customer effort survey feedback to inform the company’s roadmap. It provides useful information about how to improve the workflow, the product, or the digital experience delivered in customer-facing portals and employee apps.

How Skedulo affects customer effort

Delivering an excellent, low-effort experience requires the right technology. Customer portals, scheduling tools, web design, and more—all the pieces must come together seamlessly. 

Skedulo is a mobile workforce management platform that enables companies to deliver a consistently great experience. Operations teams can create custom forms to match their unique workflow and make low-code adjustments as needed. Skedulo integrates with other top software providers so employees can access key job details that make them more prepared to do the work.

With a customized workflow for customers and a highly capable staff, CES results will head in the right direction. See what makes the Skedulo Pulse Platform unique and how it can help improve customer service.

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