What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?
Customer effort score (CES) is a measurement of how much work a customer had to put into a recent interaction with a business. In other words, how easy or difficult it is to do business with an organization. In the context of customer service, the CES measures the amount of effort a customer had to expend to get an issue resolved or a question answered. Things like being transferred to multiple agents, having to repeat information and having to switch channels will increase effort and therefore likely lower a business's CES.
Customer effort score (CES) is a relatively new measurement - less than ten-years-old. It was popularized by the 2010 HBR article "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers," in which the authors presented research results that show ease of effort is a much better indicator of loyalty than over-the-top service. Frills are nice, but making things easy is better. Not only does a high CES predict loyalty, but it's also a strong predictor of future purchasing behavior, as well as of the likelihood to recommend a business to friends and family.
However, CES isn't a silver bullet of measurements. It typically measures a single service interaction. Therefore, customers may have one atypically bad experience, but still love the business. Because of this shortcoming, customer effort scores need to be used in conjunction with other metrics, such as customer satisfaction and Net Promoter scores, to get a more holistic view of what customers think and feel about an organization.
A customer effort score (CES) is acquired by asking customers one simple question, typically something like, "To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement: The company made it easy for me to solve my problem." (Source: Gartner) Customers rate the question on a seven point scale, with 7 being Strongly Agree and 1 being Strongly Disagree. The best time to ask this question is immediately following a contact center interaction. Contact center software can automatically pose the question to callers or send a survey via email, making the calculation of a customer effort score (CES) very easy.
How NICE is Redefining Customer Experience
NICE offers the industry’s only unified AI platform for customer service automation. CXone Mpower revolutionizes how organizations automate customer service from start to finish—with channels, data, end-to-end workflows, and enterprise knowledge converging to improve customer experience at scale. With domain specific AI trained on the industry’s largest CX dataset, an open framework with endless integration possibilities, and a complete suite of advanced AI applications, CXone Mpower is one platform built for organizations of all sizes to deliver seamless customer service experiences, boost operational efficiency, and drive better outcomes.
Interaction Orchestration
Omnichannel interaction routing
Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
Workforce Augmentation
Contact us
If you would like to know more about our platform or just have additional questions about our products or services, please submit the contact form. For general questions or customer support please visit our Contact us page.