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.

Response format

Single item Likert (1–7, strongly disagree to strongly agree) or (1–5 in original); lower effort is better

Scale items

• How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request? (1 = Very low effort, 7 = Very high effort) — Lower scores indicate better service experience. CES correlates strongly with disloyalty behaviour: high-effort interactions predict switching, reduced repurchase, and negative word-of-mouth.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Lower effort (or higher agreement with 'easy to handle') predicts higher loyalty. The CES2.0 (1–7 agreement with 'made it easy') is the current standard. CES is strongest predictor of customer service loyalty and channel usage; NPS is strongest predictor of overall brand loyalty. The three metrics (CSAT, NPS, CES) are typically used together for comprehensive CX measurement.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

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

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