What is customer effort score (CES)? This metric shows how much effort the customer thinks they had to put in to have their problem resolved. It’s a survey question “How easy was it for you to get your problem solved?” (scale of 1 to 5) Why should you measure customer effort scores? Knowing your CES allows you to see what needs to be done to improve the way your support team interacts with your customers. It is a strong predictor of future customer loyalty – those with high effort scores are less likely to become return customers. Learn everything you need to know about customer service metrics: https://blog.kayako.com/customer-support-metrics/

1. A Guide to:
Kayako’s Customer Support Metrics deep dive series
Customer Effort
5

2. What is customer effort score?
C E S

3. This metric shows how much effort the customer
thinks they had to put in to have their problem
resolved.
What is customer effort score?
C E S

4. Why should you measure your
customer effort score?
C E S

5. Knowing your CES allows you to see what needs to be
done to improve the way your support team interacts
with your customers.
Why should you measure your
customer effort score?
C E S

6. It is a strong predictor of future customer loyalty -
those with high effort scores are less likely to become
return customers.
Why should you measure your
customer effort score?
C E S

7. Get the Ultimate
Guide to Support
Metrics cheat sheet.
Your guide to all the
customer support
metrics that
matter, and how to
calculate them.
Check it out!

8. C E S
How to measure your
customer effort score

9. Simply ask your customers how easy they found their
interaction with you.
There are a couple of ways you can do this…
How to measure your
customer effort score
C E S

10. Ask your customers:
“How easy was it for you to get your issue resolved fully?”
Ask them to answer on a scale of 1-7, ranging from “Very
How to measure your
C E S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Extremely
Difficult
Very
Difficult
Fairly
Difficult Neither
Fairly
Easy
Very
Easy
Extremely
Easy

11. Alternatively, ask customers to what degree they
agree with the following statement:
“The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.”
Ask them to answer on a 1-7 point scale from “Strongly
disagree” to “Strongly agree”.
How to measure your
customer effort score
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Strongly
Disagree Disagree
Somewhat
Disagree
Neither
Agree
or Disagree
Somewhat
Agree Agree
Strongly
Agree
C E S

12. How to calculate your
customer effort score
C E S

13. All customer effort scores
Number of customers who responded
= Your CES
How to calculate your
customer effort score
Find out your overall CES by finding the average of all
your customers’ scores:
C E S

14. So you’ve got your
customer effort score…
Now what?
C E S

15. So you’ve got your
customer effort score…
96% of customers who had high-effort experiences
reported being disloyal, compared to only 9 percent of
customers with low-effort experiences who reported
being disloyal.
C E S

16. So you’ve got your
customer effort score…
According to a CEB study, customers who have a CES of
5 (on a 1-7 scale) are 22% more loyal than those with a
score of 1.
Is your customer effort score more or less than 5?
C E S

17. (on a scale of 1-7)
Poor customer effort score?
Less than 5
C E S

18. Poor customer effort score?
Less than 5
What this means:
(on a scale of 1-7)
C E S

19. What you can do:
Poor customer effort score?
Less than 5
C E S

20. Delve deeper into your processes and see what you
can do to improve customer effort right away.
Are your average first reply times very high? Are there
usually a high number of replies per case? How about
channel switching?
Improving your other metrics should improve your
CES over time.
C E S
What you can do:
Poor customer effort score?
Less than 5

21. Good customer effort score?
(on a scale of 1-7)
More than 5
C E S

22. What this means:
Good customer effort score?
More than 5
(on a scale of 1-7)
C E S

23. This is the most reliable indicator of customer loyalty.
If you’re achieving good customer effort scores,
you’re more likely to get repeat customers.
What this means:
Good customer effort score?
More than 5
C E S

24. What to do:
Good customer effort score?
More than 5
C E S

25. Look at instances where customer effort scores are
lower than average, and see what you can do to improve
these areas.
There’s no need to go above and beyond to delight
customers that already have good customer effort
scores.
The same CEB study found that boosting CES from 5 to
7 only increases loyalty by 2%.
Good customer effort score?
More than 5
What to do:
C E S

26. Get the Ultimate
Guide to Support
Metrics cheat sheet.
Your guide to all the
customer support
metrics that
matter, and how to
calculate them.
Check it out!

27. kayako.com
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