Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much effort a customer puts into interacting with your business. The lower the effort, the more likely they are to come back.

If customers have to work hard to buy from you, get help, or resolve a problem, they will find someone who makes it easier. CES gives you a direct read on that friction, so you can fix it before it costs you. It sits alongside other most important sales metrics as a core indicator of customer experience health.

What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric that measures how easy it is for customers to interact with your business, whether that means making a purchase, resolving a support issue, or navigating your website.

A low-effort experience builds loyalty. A high-effort experience drives customers away, often quietly, before you notice the churn.

How to measure Customer Effort Score

CES is collected through short post-interaction surveys. Send one after a purchase, a support conversation, or a sign-up. Ask something direct: "How easy was it to resolve your issue today?" and offer a simple scale.

To calculate your score, divide the number of high-effort ratings by the total responses, or average the scores across all responses, depending on your scale format.

CES = Sum of all scores / Total number of responses

The simpler the survey, the more responses you will get. A single question with a numbered scale or emoji rating takes seconds to complete and gives you consistent, comparable data over time.

What is a good CES?

There is no universal benchmark because scale formats vary. Some businesses use a 1 to 5 scale, others use 1 to 7 or 1 to 10. What matters is the trend over time, and how your score compares before and after a process change.

Regardless of format, aim for the majority of responses to land in the high-ease range. If a significant portion of customers report high effort, that is a clear signal to investigate where the friction is.

When to use Customer Effort Score

Send CES surveys immediately after a customer interaction, while the experience is fresh. There are three moments where it is most useful.

After a purchase

Survey customers right after checkout, either as an on-page prompt or an email sent within the hour. Keep the question focused on the purchase process itself: how easy was it to complete the transaction? This captures friction in your checkout flow before it compounds into cart abandonment.

After a subscription sign-up

For SaaS or subscription products, you have two options. Survey immediately after sign-up to catch onboarding friction, or wait a few weeks and trigger a survey inside the product once the customer has had time to use it. The delayed approach lets you ask richer questions about setup, configuration, and early experience.

After a customer service interaction

This is the most time-sensitive moment. About 96% of customers who leave a business do so because of poor customer service. Sending a CES survey the moment a chat or call ends, or within 20 minutes if automation requires a delay, gives you a direct link between the interaction and the score. Pair it with an open-text field so customers can explain what made the experience easy or hard.

Types of CES surveys

Keep surveys short. The goal is a high response rate and consistent data, not an exhaustive questionnaire. These three formats work well.

Numbered scales

The most familiar format. Ask a question like "How easy was it to contact customer service today?" and let customers choose a number from 1 to 5 or 1 to 7. Higher numbers mean lower effort. Simple to deploy, simple to analyze.

Likert scale

The Likert Scale replaces numbers with statements. You present a statement like "It was easy to find the product I was looking for" and ask customers to choose from a range of agreement options:

• Strongly disagree
• Disagree
• Somewhat disagree
• Undecided
• Somewhat agree
• Agree
• Strongly agree

Some versions add colour coding, with red for disagreement and green for agreement, to reduce misreads.

Emoticon ratings

Emoji-based surveys generate higher response rates than numbered scales for many audiences. Use three to five options ranging from frustrated to delighted. Assign numerical values to each emoji when you process the data, so you can track trends the same way you would with a numbered scale.

If you want decisive data with no neutral option, use a thumbs-up or thumbs-down format. It removes ambiguity and forces a clear signal.

How to create CES surveys

A well-designed survey takes seconds to complete and still gives you actionable data. Keep these principles in mind.

Use mobile compatibility

More than 52% of internet users access the web from a mobile device. Your survey needs to work on a small screen without scrolling or pinching. Write short questions, put positive responses at the top, and eliminate any text or links that could pull the customer away before they submit.

Most survey tools let you preview across screen sizes before publishing.

Automate triggers

Automating the process means every relevant interaction gets a follow-up survey, without anyone on your team tracking it manually. Set the trigger conditions once, and the right survey goes to the right customer at the right moment.

Share data across teams

CES results are useful to more than one team. Sales needs to know if the purchase process creates friction. Support needs to see how their interactions are landing. If you cannot give direct access to results across the company, bring the data into a shared dashboard so everyone sees the same numbers at the same time. That shared view is where CES moves from a metric to a decision-making tool.

Why track Customer Effort Score?

You might feel your processes are working well enough. CES tells you whether your customers agree.

When customers have to work hard to get what they need, they leave. You may not notice a single departure, but the pattern adds up. Every lost customer represents marketing spend you will not recover, plus the future revenue they would have generated.

Tracking CES gives you an early signal before churn shows up in your revenue numbers. It tells you where to act and whether the changes you make are actually reducing friction.

Predict future behaviour

Research shows that approximately 94% of customers who experience low effort will buy from the same company again. A consistently strong CES is a leading indicator of repeat purchase behaviour.

Build customer loyalty

Loyalty is not built through delight alone. It is built through ease. Customers who can get what they need without friction return, and they do not spend time looking for alternatives. CES tells you whether you are earning that loyalty or eroding it.

Generate referrals

A customer who found the experience effortless is more likely to recommend your company to others. A customer who struggled will say so too. CES gives you the signal early enough to act before the negative word of mouth spreads.

How to improve your CES

You do not need to wait for survey results to start reducing customer effort. These three approaches address friction at the source.

Offer multiple support channels

Customers have different preferences for how they get help. Some will call. Others prefer chat, email, or a social media message. Offering multiple channels lets customers choose the path of least resistance for them, which directly reduces perceived effort and improves your score.

Use self-service options

Many customers would rather solve a problem themselves than wait for a support agent. A well-organized knowledge base, a chatbot that surfaces relevant articles, or a clear FAQ page can resolve the most common issues without any human involvement. This frees your support team for complex cases while keeping effort low for customers who want a fast answer.

Promote quick turnaround

Wait times are one of the biggest drivers of high-effort experiences. Callback options, fast first-response times, and efficient handoffs between teams all reduce the time a customer spends waiting. The faster a customer gets to a resolution, the lower their effort score will be.

CES alongside other customer experience metrics

CES answers one specific question: how easy was that interaction? For a fuller picture of customer experience, use it alongside these two metrics.

Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty across the entire relationship, not just a single interaction. It asks how likely a customer is to recommend you to someone they know, on a scale of 0 to 10.

Responses fall into three groups:

• Promoters who respond with 9 or 10
• Passives who rate you 7 or 8
• Detractors who score you 0 to 6

Calculate NPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Scores range from -100 to +100. NPS tells you about the overall relationship; CES tells you about specific friction points within it.

Customer Satisfaction Score

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) captures a customer's immediate reaction to a transaction or interaction. It typically uses a 1 to 5 scale and asks how satisfied the customer was.

CSAT = (Number of 4 and 5 ratings / Total responses) × 100

CSAT reflects sentiment in the moment. CES explains why that sentiment exists. Used together, they give you both the what and the why of your customer experience.

Track CES where your team can see it

Knowing your Customer Effort Score is only useful if the right people can act on it. When CES data lives in a shared dashboard alongside related metrics like CSAT and churn, your team stops waiting for someone to pull a number and starts making decisions with confidence.

Klipfolio connects to the tools you already use to collect survey and support data, so your CES, NPS, and CSAT stay current and visible, without anyone having to chase down a report or paste numbers into a spreadsheet to figure out what changed.