What Is Customer Effort Score (CES)?
A single-question metric that measures how easy it was for a customer to complete one task — resolve an issue, check out, finish setup — usually on an agree-to-disagree scale.
Customer Effort Score measures one thing: how much work it was for the customer to get something done. Instead of asking whether they were happy, it asks whether the task was easy.
The metric is usually traced to a 2010 Harvard Business Review article by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman and Nick Toman, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers”, which challenged the idea that companies must “delight” their customers.
The question and the scale
CES is a single statement or question about a specific task. One common wording is a statement such as “The company made it easy for me to handle my issue”, rated from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Seven points is common, and some teams use five. Other versions ask “How easy was it to…?” on a scale from very difficult to very easy. Pick one wording and keep it, so scores stay comparable over time.
How to calculate CES
There are two common ways to report it:
- The average rating. Add up all the ratings and divide by the number of responses. On a seven-point scale a higher average means an easier experience.
- The share who agreed. The percentage of respondents who chose the top boxes (for example 5, 6 or 7 on a seven-point scale), the same way CSAT counts satisfied responses.
The example above gives both: an average of 5.6 out of 7, and 82% agreeing. As with CSAT, state the method next to the number.
When to use it
Ask CES right after a task that should be easy: a support contact, a checkout, setting up an account, returning an item, finishing a form. It points at friction in a process, which makes it most useful when you are fixing a specific journey. It tells you less about the relationship as a whole.
CES, CSAT and NPS
CSAT asks how satisfied someone was with an interaction. NPS asks how likely they are to recommend you. CES asks how hard the task was. A support interaction can leave a customer satisfied and still have taken three transfers and a repeated explanation, and only CES asks about that. They work best together: CES to find the friction, CSAT to see how a moment landed, NPS to see how people feel overall.
Limits
A score alone does not tell you what made the task hard. Pair CES with an open-ended question such as “What made this easy or difficult?” and read the answers. Like any single-moment measure, it also reflects who chose to answer, so report how many people responded alongside the score.
Example
| Rating | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customers | 4 | 6 | 8 | 18 | 46 | 48 | 70 |
- Average rating
- 1,120 ÷ 200=5.6 out of 7Add up all 200 ratings (4 × 1, then 6 × 2, and so on up to 70 × 7) to get 1,120, then divide by the 200 customers.
- Share who agreed (5, 6 or 7)
- (46 + 48 + 70) ÷ 200=82%164 of the 200 customers chose 5, 6 or 7.
Two numbers from the same 200 answers. Say which one you are quoting, and keep to it from one period to the next.
How to Run CES in SurveyRock
Start from the Customer Effort Score template, a seven-point rating from "Very difficult" to "Very easy" with a follow-up asking what would have made it easier. Or add your own seven-point rating from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree" and set its results to report as CES. Either way, the results show the average and the share who answered 5 to 7 side by side, and that share updates when you filter the responses.