Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a contact center metric that gauges how difficult it is for a customer to have their support issue resolved. The term was coined by Mathew Dixon, et al, in their 2013 book, The Effortless Experience, and has since gained notable traction in better understanding the customer journey, right alongside other popular metrics like NPS and CSAT. Following a customer service interaction, customers are asked to describe their effort on a five- to 10-point scale, ranging from “very easy” to “very difficult”, which determines the CES.

Many call center metrics quantify how long it takes customers to resolve their issue, whether it was resolved on the first attempt, and how friendly the support agent was. But today’s customers value ease – whether it’s finding the correct answer and troubleshooting on their own, or reaching out to a company via phone, live chat, SMS text, or social media, to name a few. The more difficult or inconvenient it is for a customer to achieve resolution to their issue, the less satisfied they will be. By surveying customers on their total effort, businesses can anticipate moments of friction in the customer journey and create proactive solutions for them.

VXI has been delivering outstanding customer experiences (CX) for over 25 years, and we believe in making the customer journey as easy as possible. So, our CES surveys are designed with the customer at the forefront:

• We’re clear and transparent about how long our surveys take and why it’ll benefit them
• We conduct our surveys timely, so the customer has the most complete picture of their effort in mind
• We keep our surveys short and provide open-ended text boxes to encourage candid feedback

To learn more about CES and other contact center metrics, be sure to check out our blog.