Customer Success
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Definition of
The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric that measures how easy or difficult it is for customers to interact with a company while resolving an issue or completing a task. It is a customer satisfaction metric that gauges the level of effort customers had to put in while engaging with a company. CES is measured by asking customers a simple question: "How easy was it to solve your problem with our company?" and then customers can rate their experience on a scale from one to five (or ten). For instance, if a customer service experience is smooth and effortless, the CES score would be high, indicating high customer satisfaction. On the other hand, if the customer had to put in a lot of effort and experienced frustration, the CES score would be low, indicating poor customer satisfaction. For example, if a customer contacts a telecom company's customer support to resolve a billing issue and gets the issue resolved easily, they would rate their CES score highly. On the other hand, if a customer contacts a telecom company's customer support to resolve a billing issue and has to wait on hold for a long time, speak to multiple representatives, or the issue remains unresolved, they would rate their CES score as low.