Glossary
Customer effort score
What is customer effort score?
Customer effort score (CES) is a survey metric that measures how much effort a customer reports expending to accomplish a task with a company, typically on a scale from 'very easy' to 'very difficult.'
How customer effort score is measured
CES asks respondents how easy or effortful a particular interaction was. Question wording, response scale and score direction differ between versions and must be stated. It is useful after an interaction to identify perceived friction. The original customer-service research associated lower effort with loyalty, but that does not establish that CES always predicts behavior better than satisfaction measures.
Applied example
An online retailer could measure perceived effort before and after revising its returns process. A higher ease score would indicate a more favorable reported experience if the scale is coded that way. A simple before-and-after comparison cannot by itself establish that the redesign caused the score change.
Why it matters
CES helps teams track perceived difficulty at specific touchpoints. Interpret it alongside task outcomes and other evidence, rather than as a universal measure of loyalty.
Qualtrics’ guide to CES describes ways to collect the score. Keep the question and scale consistent when comparing results.