Customer Effort Score (CES)

Definition

A metric assessing the effort a customer expended to resolve an issue.

How it works

CES captures perceived effort in resolving an issue; the scale direction must be clear when interpreting results. Surveys help measure customer perceptions at particular points in a service journey. Results reflect the people who responded, not automatically the entire customer base.

Business example

After support, a company asks how easy it was to change a plan or find an answer.

What to consider

Agree on question wording, survey timing and sampling. Avoid treating small or biased response groups as representative of all customers.

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