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By PPCexpo Content Team
How easy is it for your customers to get what they need from you? The Customer Effort Score answers that question. It measures the effort customers put in to resolve issues or complete tasks with your service.
Why does this matter? Because the easier you make things, the more likely customers are to stick around.
The Customer Effort Score isn’t just another number. It’s a clear way to pinpoint friction in your customer experience. If navigating your processes feels like an uphill climb, customers notice—and they remember.
By tracking this score, you get a roadmap to smoother interactions and happier customers.
Think of the Customer Effort Score as your guide to identifying what’s working and what isn’t. It highlights the areas where your customers struggle, giving you the chance to fix what’s broken. Less effort means more satisfaction, and that translates directly into loyalty.
Are you ready to make every interaction seamless? It starts here.
First…
Definition: Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much effort a customer puts into interacting with a brand, particularly during a service transaction.
The score is gathered by asking customers to rate their experience based on the effort they had to exert. A low effort score suggests a smooth and satisfying customer experience, which is crucial for customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth.
The key to a successful CES survey prompt lies in its clarity and directness. The question should be straightforward, asking customers how easy or difficult it was to handle their request or issue.
Typically, the question might look like, “On a scale from ‘Very Easy’ to ‘Very Difficult,’ how easy was it to resolve your issue today?” This direct approach avoids confusion and ensures that the feedback is specific to the effort involved.
Timing is everything when it comes to CES surveys. The best time to ask for customer feedback is right after the service interaction has concluded. This moment is when the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind, leading to more accurate and meaningful responses.
Delaying the survey can result in forgotten details or diminished emotional impact, which can skew the data.
To keep customers engaged, CES surveys should be concise. Long surveys can lead to survey fatigue, where customers either abandon the survey partway through or rush through without giving thoughtful responses.
A focused survey with only a few pointed questions encourages completion and yields higher quality data. The goal is to gather valuable insights without taking up too much of the customer’s time.
Choosing the right channel to send a CES survey can significantly impact the quality of the data you collect.
For most businesses, email stands out due to its directness and prevalence. However, don’t overlook mobile messaging if your audience trends younger. Each channel has its strengths, so match the survey medium with your customer’s most used platforms.
This alignment increases the chances they’ll see and complete your survey.
Want more customers to take your surveys? First, explain why their feedback is vital. A simple explanation can motivate participation. Also, offering incentives can boost survey response rates.
Whether it’s a discount code or entry into a draw, a small thank you can go a long way. Timing also plays a crucial role. Reach out when customers are most likely to be online, such as early evenings or weekends for B2C customers.
Survey fatigue can crush participation rates. If customers feel bombarded with requests for feedback, they might start ignoring your surveys altogether. Strike a balance by monitoring how often you send them out. Limiting CES surveys to key interaction points prevents annoyance.
Also, ensure each survey is relevant to the specific interaction they had. Personalized questions show you value their input and respect their time, keeping engagement high without tiring your customers.
When you’ve gathered your CES data, interpreting it is next on the agenda. Focus on the extremes first—high effort scores might indicate a problem that needs immediate attention, while low effort scores can show what you’re doing right.
Use this feedback to set benchmarks for what acceptable effort levels should be and pinpoint changes that could simplify interactions.
Remember, every piece of data has a story to tell about how customers interact with your brand, and it’s your job to listen and act.
Using a scatter plot to correlate your CES data with Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) can reveal deeper insights.
Plot CES scores on one axis and NPS or CSAT scores on the other to visualize the relationship between customer effort and their overall customer satisfaction or loyalty. This visual representation can highlight if high-effort experiences directly correlate with lower satisfaction or customer loyalty, guiding you on where to focus your effort-reduction strategies.
Outliers in your CES data can skew data interpretations and lead to misguided decisions. Identify these outliers and examine the circumstances that led to these extreme scores.
Investigate whether these are one-off situations or if they indicate a recurring issue that needs addressing. Handling these outliers appropriately ensures they don’t mislead your analysis but instead offer valuable insights into unusual customer experiences.
The following video will help you to create a Likert Scale Chart in Microsoft Excel.
The following video will help you to create a Likert Scale Chart in Google Sheets.
The following video will help you to create a Likert Scale Chart in Microsoft Power BI.
A good CES is generally above the industry average. But what’s “great,” and what should ring alarm bells? Typically, scores range from 1 (significant effort) to 7 (no effort). A score of 5 or above is considered great, indicating that your customers find it easy to interact with your business.
If you’re dipping below a 3, it’s time to look at what’s creating friction for your customers.
Different sectors have different benchmarks. For instance, retail often sees higher CES scores due to streamlined shopping experiences.
In contrast, sectors like utilities or telecom might struggle with lower scores due to complex customer interactions. Knowing the norms in your sector can help pinpoint how ambitious your customer effort goals should be.
In e-commerce, CES isn’t just a number; it’s a roadmap to refining your customer journey phases. Low scores often highlight hurdles in navigation, product searches, or checkout processes. By addressing these areas, businesses can significantly enhance their online customer experience, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty.
Google Forms is a straightforward tool for creating CES surveys. Its ease of use enables businesses to quickly design and distribute surveys without needing specialized skills.
The platform supports various question types, from multiple choice to linear scales, which are ideal for measuring effort. Responses are collected in real time, and data can be viewed directly in Google Forms or exported to spreadsheets for further analysis.
This simplicity helps businesses consistently gather customer feedback without significant investment in time or resources.
Microsoft Forms offers more advanced features for tracking Customer Effort Score, suitable for organizations that require detailed customization. Users can tailor the survey design to align with their branding, creating a seamless experience for customers.
The tool also provides more sophisticated analytical capabilities, such as automatic charts, graphs and integration with other Microsoft apps like Excel for deeper data analysis.
This level of customization and integration allows businesses to tailor their CES tracking to specific needs and workflows, enabling more precise insight into customer interactions.
A radar chart is an excellent tool for visualizing CES data across multiple dimensions, such as onboarding and support. This type of chart displays multivariate data in a way that is easy to understand, showing a web-like structure that helps compare different areas of service.
By plotting CES scores for various service dimensions on a radar chart, businesses can easily identify areas with higher customer effort and prioritize improvements. This visual comparison helps organizations spot trends and patterns, facilitating strategic decisions to reduce customer effort across multiple touchpoints.
A good CES is generally above the industry average. But what’s “great,” and what should ring alarm bells? Typically, scores range from 1 (significant effort) to 7 (no effort). A score of 5 or above is considered great, indicating that your customers find it easy to interact with your business.
If you’re dipping below a 3, it’s time to look at what’s creating friction for your customers.
Different sectors have different benchmarks. For instance, retail often sees higher CES scores due to streamlined shopping experiences.
In contrast, sectors like utilities or telecom might struggle with lower scores due to complex customer interactions. Knowing the norms in your sector can help pinpoint how ambitious your customer effort goals should be.
In e-commerce, CES isn’t just a number; it’s a roadmap to refining your digital customer journey. Low scores often highlight hurdles in navigation, product searches, or checkout processes. By addressing these areas, businesses can significantly enhance their online customer experience, leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty.
Using a Likert scale chart to visualize CES data across different customer interactions is like turning on a light in a dark room. It helps you see clearly which interactions are smooth sailing and which are rough seas.
Each point on the scale represents a level of effort, and tracking these points over time shows you trends. It’s a tool that lets you pinpoint where to reduce friction and make your customers’ journey smoother.
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, asks customers how likely they are to recommend a service, while CES asks how easy it was to interact with a company. It’s like asking two different questions at a dinner party to get the full story.
NPS measures overall sentiment, and CES focuses on transactional ease. Both are important because while NPS tells you about loyalty, CES tells you about the immediate issues that might be turning your customers away.
It’s not about choosing one over the other; it’s about using both to get a fuller picture of customer experience.
Self-service options are a hit! They let customers find answers without waiting on the phone. Think of how you use a vending machine instead of waiting in a cafe line. It’s that simple.
Companies are setting up FAQs, forums, and instructional videos. Why? Because when customers help themselves, they solve problems fast and feel good about it!
Ever got lost on a website? Annoying, isn’t it? That’s why businesses are streamlining their digital spaces. They’re making apps and websites user-friendly. Big buttons, clear labels, and fewer clicks to get where you need to go.
It’s like having a GPS for your online shopping or banking. Simple, quick, and gets you to your destination without a hitch.
Now, let’s talk products. Companies use CES feedback to tweak their goods. If a product is hard to use, they want to know. It’s like finding a rock in your shoe and then getting a better fitting pair. Designers look at CES data, spot the trouble areas, and fix them.
The result? Products that are easier to use and make daily tasks a breeze.
When you slice Customer Effort Score (CES) data by demographics such as age, gender, or region, you unlock a treasure trove of insights. Think about it: a 20-year-old might find an app interface intuitive, while someone in their 60s might struggle.
By watching these patterns, businesses can tailor support and design to fit each group, making sure no one’s left scratching their head in confusion.
Imagine knowing if a customer will stick around or bounce before it happens. That’s the power of predictive analysis with CES data. By tracking how much effort customers put in over time, companies can spot warning signs of churn or the potential for loyalty.
It’s like having a crystal ball, but instead of murky visions, you get clear, actionable data.
Why stop at just CES? Throw in some operational KPIs and watch the magic happen. Let’s say your CES scores are dipping. If you layer that info with data on call wait times or issue resolution rates, patterns start to pop out.
Maybe longer wait times lead to higher effort scores. With this combo, you’re not just collecting data; you’re solving puzzles that can lead to real changes in business goals.
Ah, implicit bias, the sneaky troublemaker that skews your data! It pops up when your survey design or distribution isn’t balanced. To kick this problem to the curb, start by crafting neutral questions. Avoid leading phrases that nudge the respondent toward a specific answer.
Also, mix up your distribution methods. Relying solely on email? Why not try SMS or in-app notifications too? This way, you reach a broader audience, which helps in getting a more accurate picture of customer effort.
Getting folks to fill out surveys can feel like pulling teeth, right? Boost your response rates by keeping surveys short and sweet. Two to three questions max!
Also, timing is everything. Send that survey soon after the interaction while the experience is still fresh in their minds. Offering a small incentive can also work wonders. A little nudge, like entering respondents into a prize draw, might just do the trick.
When you go global, remember, one size doesn’t fit all. Cultural nuances can affect how people perceive effort. For instance, in some cultures, people might be more likely to report lower effort due to politeness norms.
Adapt your CES tool by localizing the language and scaling the measurement scale if needed. Also, consider cultural training for your team to better understand these nuances. This helps in interpreting CES data more effectively, ensuring you make the right adjustments for each market.
Keeping clients happy is less about grand gestures and more about reducing their effort. A low CES means customers can solve their problems or complete necessary actions easily, fostering loyalty. Regularly measuring CES and responding to its findings helps businesses prevent customer frustration and build stronger relationships.
First impressions matter. A new customer’s initial interactions with a business can set the tone for the entire relationship. By ensuring these first steps involve minimal effort, companies can boost satisfaction and retention.
Streamlined forms, clear information, and efficient support can make the onboarding process a breeze.
Poor CES scores often highlight complex or time-consuming processes within a business. By addressing these areas, not only can customer satisfaction improve, but operational efficiency can also increase. This might involve simplifying a procedure, enhancing user interfaces, or better training staff to handle common queries more effectively.
SaaS companies have nailed the formula for reducing customer effort. They focus on software that’s easy to use from the start. One shining example is a cloud-based CRM system that revamped its user interface.
What did they do? They simplified their dashboard so that all tools are accessible within two clicks from the home page. They also introduced a real-time chat support accessible directly through the dashboard. The results were clear. Their CES score improved by 30%, reflecting how much easier it was for users to manage their tasks.
In the retail sector, a major breakthrough in CES came from a well-known sports apparel store. Their challenge was the checkout process; it was just too slow.
So, they introduced a one-page checkout system. No more multiple pages to click through. They also added more payment options, including digital wallets, to speed things up.
The impact? Their checkout times decreased by 50%, and their CES score improved, showing customers appreciated the faster, smoother process.
Banks and financial institutions realize that high-stakes interactions, like loan applications, can be stressful. A leading bank took steps to simplify this for their customers.
They cut down the form fields in the application by half and introduced a system that auto-fills information from the customer’s account. They also started a service where customers can schedule a call with a loan advisor to walk through the application. This proactive approach led to a 40% increase in their CES, signaling a significant reduction in customer effort.
The Customer Effort Score isn’t just a number—it’s a guide to understanding how easy or hard it is for your customers to interact with your business. It sheds light on the friction points that drive customers away and highlights where you’re getting it right.
By focusing on reducing effort, you’re not only improving customer experiences but also strengthening loyalty and retention. Happy customers stay longer, recommend your services, and contribute to sustainable growth.
Start using the Customer Effort Score to identify opportunities and build lasting relationships. Make it easy for your customers, and they’ll keep coming back. Because when effort goes down, loyalty goes up.
Net Promoter, NPS, NPS Prism and many other terms related to NPS are registered trademarks of Bain & Company Inc., Satmetrix Systems Inc., and Fred Reichheld.
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