Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer rating of how easy it was to resolve their issue
What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?
Customer effort score measures how easy it was for a customer to get their issue resolved or complete a task. It is based on a single question and a rating scale.
Making things easy is one of the strongest drivers of loyalty, so CES helps find and remove points of friction.
How this KPI is measured
- Function
- Customer Success & Service
- Sub-function
- Customer Experience
- Industry
- All Industries
- Type
- Lagging
- Impact
- Quality
- Unit
- score (1–7)
- Measurement frequency
- Per interaction / Monthly
- Formula
- Sum of CES scores / Number of respondents
How to calculate it
Ask customers after an interaction how much effort it took, on a scale such as 1 to 7. Add up the scores and divide by the number of respondents.
For example, if 300 customers give scores totalling 1,560 out of 7, the average is 5.2.
Check whether a higher score is better in your scale, and use the same wording each time. Ask straight after the interaction.
Where it is used
Finding friction
Locate hard parts of the journey.
Improving support
Make resolution easier.
Predicting loyalty
Low effort links to retention.
How to improve it
Tips and common mistakes
- Use the same scale and wording every time.
- Combine with satisfaction and NPS.
- Act on low scores individually where possible.
More Customer Success & Service kpi library
Build better plans, faster
Join the waitlist for early access to curated insights, flexible templates, and rapid iteration across strategy, planning, and project management.