Customer Effort Score (CES) is a simple survey question that indicates how easy or complex a specific interaction is. It’s quick, easy for customers to answer and track over time, and correlates with business outcomes. It’s also a powerful predictor of future purchase behavior and referral likelihood. Low-effort experiences reduce service costs by lowering repeat calls, transfers, and channel switching.
Customer Satisfaction
The importance of customer satisfaction is widely understood. But what is a customer effort score? That’s why companies strive to create amazing experiences that delight customers and lead to high CSAT. However, the quest to deliver moments of pure delight should not detract from reducing unnecessary effort during customer interactions. That’s where customer effort score (CES) comes in.
CES is a simple metric that measures how easy it is for customers to interact with your business. It can be asked after customer service interaction, such as NPS score benchmark a support ticket or accessing a knowledge-based article. It asks customers to rate, on a Likert scale, how much effort they put in to complete an interaction with your company.
Unlike other customer experience metrics, such as Net Promoter Score, which measures overall satisfaction and the combined delight and ease of use of an interaction, CES specifically focuses on the effort required to interact with your company. This makes it a better predictor of future purchase behavior and customer advocacy than NPS. It’s also more granular and actionable, which allows you to pinpoint specific areas where your customers are putting in a lot of effort—and to fix those friction points before they become big problems.
Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is an essential measure of the value a company receives from its customers. Loyal customers are more likely to spend more on each transaction, be repeat buyers, and recommend the business to others. They also help reduce support costs by lowering attrition rates and speeding up new customer acquisition.
Many companies attempt to build customer loyalty by delighting them through exceptional customer service experiences. However, it turns out that meeting a customer’s needs is much more effective at building loyalty than going above and beyond to exceed expectations. A study by the Corporate Executive Board found that services requiring minimal effort are more likely to draw customers back than those that aim to delight them.
Unlike Net Promoter Score (NPS), a CES survey can predict future behavior more accurately. For example, a CES survey can determine whether a customer intends to recommend the brand. In addition, a CES survey can identify the specific reasons why a customer is not likely to recommend the brand.
Customer Retention
Many companies have a long list of customer experience metrics they track. Some wonder why they need to add another. The answer is simple: CES is a valuable leading indicator, and it belongs in the chain that connects every interaction to customer-centric outcomes.
Unlike traditional satisfaction surveys, CES measures the effort to complete a task rather than the overall delight experience. It also allows you to compare the CES of different processes and channels to identify improvement areas.
When used alongside CSAT and NPS, CES is a powerful tool that predicts loyalty more accurately than alone. As a result, companies can take action to reduce disloyal customers and prevent them from leaving. Retaining loyal customers is the best way to grow revenue and increase profits. The cost of acquiring new customers is up to 5-7 times higher than the cost of keeping them around, and a 5% boost in retention rates can lead to profit increases of 25%-95%. In addition to boosting revenue, loyalty is vital in fostering word-of-mouth and customer referrals, which can further drive growth and expansion. It’s easy to measure and improve customer loyalty using simple tactics. CES surveys are an effective and inexpensive tool for measuring and improving customer retention.
Customer Churn
Customer churn occurs when customers decide not to continue purchasing products or services from your company and end their relationship. This is a huge loss for any business, especially since acquiring new customers can cost up to 7 times more than retaining existing ones. Customer Effort Score (CES) is a key CX metric that measures how easy or difficult it is for customers to interact with your business.
CES is a simple measure that asks customers to rate how much effort they put in for a particular interaction, such as filing a support ticket or accessing a knowledge base article. This can be done by sending surveys immediately after the interaction or through periodic follow-ups. It is precious when companies track the results of each interaction and identify trends that can help prevent future churn.
One example of a CES success story is Mention. This media-monitoring company reduced its churn by 22% by using a cohort analysis to separate defecting customers into groups based on their reasons for leaving. This allowed them to identify patterns, increase communication, prioritize support tickets, and provide a more personalized experience for high-value customers.
