Customer Effort Score

What it measures

Measures the effort a customer has to exert to get an issue handled, a request fulfilled, or a product purchased. The Customer Effort Score challenges the prevailing 'delight customers' paradigm — CES research shows that reducing customer effort is more predictive of loyalty than delighting customers. Particularly important for service recovery, contact centres, and digital self-service contexts.

Representative items

• The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.
• How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request? (1=very low effort, 5=very high effort)

Citation

Dixon, M., Freeman, K., & Toman, N. (2010). Stop trying to delight your customers. Harvard Business Review, 88(7/8), 116–122.