Customer Effort Score: What & How to Measure it?

When it comes to measuring customer experience, Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the most commonly used metric. However, there are other metrics that can help you get a better understanding of customer satisfaction.

Customer Effort Score (CES) is one of those metrics that focus on the ease or difficulty of customers in dealing with your company. This blog post will explain what CES is and how to measure it.

What is the Customer Effort Score?

Customer Effort Score rose to popularity in 2010, with the publication of an HBR article entitled Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers.

CES is a metric that measures the effort required by customers to interact with your company to get their issues resolved. It is measured by asking customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1-5, where 1 is the least effort and 5 is the most effort. The higher the score, the more difficult it was for the customer to resolve their issue.

How to Measure CES?

To measure CES, you need to ask your customers the following question: “How easy was it to resolve your issue with us today?” The response rate can be on a scale from 1-5, with 1 indicating “Very Easy” and 5 indicating “Very Difficult.”

You can also conduct a follow-up survey to understand why customers gave you a particular score. This can help you identify the key areas where you need to improve.

Types:

There are three types of CES – high, medium, and low.

• The high CES means that the customers found the interaction with the business very complicated and stressful.
• The medium CES is where the interaction was neutral, and customers did not feel particularly satisfied or dissatisfied.
• The low CES means that the customers had an effortless experience, and they found the interaction with the business pleasant and satisfying.

Importance:

The importance of understanding customer effort lies in reducing customer churn rate. If your CES is high, customers will more likely switch to your competitors. But if your CES is low, your customers will most probably stay loyal to your brand.

Summarization

In summary, the CES metric can help you determine the customer effort and make the necessary changes to improve satisfaction. It is an essential metric to keep track of, especially if your company heavily relies on customer support.

By measuring the CES and working on its improvement, you will undoubtedly see an increase in customer satisfaction and retention.

Related Posts:

• The Ultimate Sales Funnel – imeetify
• Customer Effort score – Hubspot