What is Customer effort score?
Customer effort score (CES) is a metric that measures how much effort a customer had to expend to accomplish a task with a company, typically on a scale from ‘very easy’ to ‘very difficult.’
How it works
CES is based on the finding (Dixon et al., 2010) that reducing customer effort is a stronger driver of loyalty than delighting customers. It is measured immediately after a specific interaction (support call, purchase, onboarding) by asking ‘How easy was it to [accomplish task]?’ on a 5 or 7 point scale. CES predicts repurchase and recommendation behavior better than customer satisfaction (CSAT) for transactional interactions. It is particularly useful for identifying friction points in service delivery, support processes, and self-service tools.
Applied example
After implementing a new self-service returns process, an e-commerce company sees CES improve from 3.1 to 4.5 (out of 5) and return-related support calls drop by 60%. The metric directly links the design change to reduced customer effort.
Why it matters
Customer effort score operationalizes the principle that loyalty is won by making things easy rather than by exceeding expectations, focusing teams on eliminating friction rather than adding features.
