A customer effort score (CES) is a customer experience metric that looks at the amount of effort a customer has to make in order to have their request processed. This could include getting a question answered, having an issue resolved, fulfilling a product purchase, or signing a contract.<\/p>\n
CES is an important metric, as customer satisfaction often hinges on how easy a brand is to work with. It has been prioritized by the peer-to-peer review site G2, which has an \u201cEasiest to Work With\u201d award for every product category.<\/p>\n
More and more, customers want seamless experiences when interacting with a brand. A high customer effort score can help businesses identify areas that need improvement, so they can optimize how their customers engage with them.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to note that a customer effort score won\u2019t provide a full picture. Instead, it should be observed and analyzed alongside other customer satisfaction metrics (e.g. a net promoter score) to truly understand how customers feel about a brand.<\/p>\n
Customer effort scores can be measured with the use of quick surveys asking customers how difficult or easy it was to have their needs met. The question can be phrased, \u201cOn a scale of \u2018very easy\u2019 to \u2018very difficult\u2019, how easy was it to interact with [company name]?\u201d<\/p>\n
In terms of format, brands tend to use Likert scales, with five to seven points that span the range. Brands have also used the visual emoticon rating instead, with face emojis depicting different feelings about the experience.<\/p>\n
People might respond \u201cvery difficult\u201d if they had to spend a lot of time on your knowledge base in an unsuccessful attempt to find an answer. Alternatively, you might get a \u201cvery easy\u201d rating if you\u2019ve added smart filters that simplify content sorting, and follow up via chat.<\/p>\n
When it comes to a numerical value, you can measure your customer effort score by taking the sum of customer effort ratings (assuming you\u2019ve attached a number to each response type) and divide it by the total number of survey responses.<\/p>\n
Customer effort surveys should be deployed strategically and sparingly, so you\u2019re not negatively impacting the customer experience. They are best used in these three scenarios:<\/p>\n
As mentioned, a customer effort score is just one metric that analyzes customer satisfaction, but it shouldn\u2019t be counted on to provide the full picture of the customer experience. Instead, teams should use it as one element in a broader customer satisfaction performance strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A customer effort score is a customer experience metric measuring the amount of effort a customer has to make to get their request resolved. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"category":[1],"tags":[25018],"coauthors":[571],"class_list":["post-28275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-glossary"],"yoast_head":"\n