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CES Calculator : Find out your Customer Effort Score!

Find your Customer Effort Score (CES) by filling in the number of times you received a particular score in the boxes. 

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Access 5 CX template and an in-depth guide on NPS surveys.

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NPS 27

Very Easy

Easy

NPS 28

Neither easy nor difficult

NPS 29

Difficult

Very Difficult

Your Customer Effort Score is

0

Are your CES Scores not where they should be?

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  • Gain insights into Customer pain points online, via telephone or face-to-face
  • Track CES scores along your Customer’s journey with your organization – measure improvement over time
Speak with our CES Expert
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The Voxco Advantage

  • Premium service and support
  • Augment your CES surveys with a wide range of question types and survey methodologies
  • Easy online surveys with drag and drop functionality
  • Powerful dashboards and analytics tools to help you get actionable insights 
  • Enhance your CX Efforts with a wide range of easy to use tools

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Everything you need to know about CES Calculators and Surveys

What is CES?

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer effort score is a widely used customer-driven metric, alongside Net Promoter Score® and Customer Satisfaction. CES surveys ask respondents how much effort they had to exert to accomplish a task associated with a product or service. 

Essentially, CES surveys quantify a customer or user’s ease of interaction.

A good Customer Effort Score can be linked to improved customer retention and repurchase rates. Positive CES scores can also result in better word of mouth brand building for your organization – after all, who doesn’t want an easier experience?

Why is Customer Effort Score important?

94% of customers going through an effortless experience are likely to repurchase vs. only 4% of those went through a high level of effort

Helps track performance

CES calculators and surveys are excellent at tracking your organization’s performance at touchpoints you deem important (or sometimes your customers decide that for you). It helps you set a benchmark for yourself, one which you can continuously use after updates to your product or service.
(Did my CES go down after the introduction of a new update?) 

Helps gather feedback that would be otherwise hidden

Barring extremely positive or negative experiences, People generally don’t go out of their way to tell you what they think about your offerings. CES surveys are quick, and take very little of your respondents’ time, while delivering valuable data about user preferences to you.

Can help predict customer loyalty

A study found that by improving a customer’s CES score from 1 to 5 ( 7 point scale), their loyalty increased by 22%. Reducing customer friction at as many touch points as possible can be a better driver of customer loyalty than creating exceptional experiences at singular customer touchpoints.

How does a CES Calculator work?

There are multiple methods for measuring and calculating CES scores. 

3 point scale

Easy, Difficult, Neither.

This method does not include a numbered scale. The question asked to respondents is: “How easy was it for you to complete your task with us?”. They are allowed to choose their answer from three options “Easy – Neither – Difficult”.

 

CES Calculator 02
Difficult- Neither - Easy

A CES Calculator employing this method is likely to record the highest response rates, due to the sheer simplicity of the survey itself.
The CES is gauged by subtracting the percentage of respondents who replied with “easy” from the percentage of respondents who chose “difficult” as their response. The result is between -100 to 100, and the higher the result, the better your CES.

5 point scale

This was the original method employed by CES Calculators when the metric was first launched. Respondents are asked “How much effort did you have to exert to complete your task with our product/service?”

They can choose from a 5 point scale with the answers ranging from Very little effort to Very high effort.

CES Calculator 03

A CES Calculator then derives the Customer Effort Score by dividing the sum of all individual CES scores by the number of respondents. This results in a score from 1 to 5, with lower being better.

7 point scale

The third method for CES calculation is a slight evolution of the 5 point scale. The questions are similar and generally go: “On a scale of 1 to 7, how easy or difficult would you rate the experience of accomplishing said task with our product or service”. 

The Answers range from Extremely easy to Extremely Difficult. 

CES Calculator 04

The Customer Effort Score is similarly calculated by dividing the sum of all individual CES Scores by the number of respondents. With this scale, you’ll be getting a score between 1 and 7, with lower scores being better.

Enhance Customer Experience with Voxco

Take a look at the survey templates below to see how Voxco surveys look on any device. See all possible question types on Voxco.

Customer Buying habits
Consumer Insights
NPS® Survey
Voice of the Customer
Try a Sample Survey with all Question Types

Collect High Quality Real time Customer Feedback from multiple channels like

mail
phone call
comment
link
website
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Leveraging CES calculators and surveys

Strategically implementing CES in your organizational framework

You now know what CES is and how to calculate it – but how do you best use it to your organizations’ advantage?

A big factor behind high survey response rates is accessibility – CES surveys are short, to the point and effectively at finding out exactly what they are intended to. Think of CES surveys as a scalpel, and yourself as the surgeon wielding it. It is only as effective as you make it.

In this case, “wielding” equates to its positioning.

CES Calculator 01

There are many more options for integrating CES surveys, depending on the context of your requirements. The key is to place this survey where you need specific, targeted information which can help you glean insights into that touchpoint. 

Free Customer Experience Kit

Fill out this form to access 5 CX template and in-depth guide on NPS®surveys

Tips for building CES Surveys

Simplicity is key

CES surveys’ main attribute is its simplicity, and how quickly respondents can be done with it. While most online survey softwares allow you to append more questions to CES surveys – you must only do that if absolutely necessary or risk lowering survey completion rates.

Mobile optimization is a must

With over 50% of online interactions happening on mobiles, it is essential that your CES calculators and surveys are mobile optimized. This means optimizing for low network bandwidth as well, so you need to ensure that your surveys have minimal branding or any images that would pose issues on mobile devices. 

Get feedback from multiple channels

Everyone has their preferred means for communication, and it’s up to you to make sure you collect feedback on as many channels as possible. Voxco’s omnichannel survey software allows you to do exactly that, and has intuitive dashboards for you to analyse your data.

Share your results

If you’ve made changes based on customer feedback, then you should let them know about it! It will empower your customers and help build your brand’s image in their eyes.

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Choosing between CES and other metrics

There are a few other metrics which you can choose from for conducting customer experience surveys. NPS® and Customer satisfaction surveys can also be a good source for clear insights into different aspects of Customer thinking. 

NPS® Surveys

This is a widely used metric that measures Customer Experience. NPS® Surveys can help identify if your customers are detractors or promoters for your brand. It essentially boils down to asking respondents 2 questions

  • “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”
    The respondent gets to choose a score between 0 to 10.
  • “Why did you give us that score?”
    Here, the respondent is given space to write out an answer as to why they felt you deserved that score.

You can learn more on our NPS® calculator resource. 

CSAT surveys

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey can help you understand a respondents’ satisfaction with a product or service. It is usually shared immediately after an interaction with a customer.
It consists of one question

“How satisfied were you with your experience”
This question can be for any experience or interaction with your brand. Whether its customer support, or your product itself, or even how long they had to wait for specific services. You can read more about CSAT Surveys here.

How to use CES & NPS® together?

What’s great about these CX metrics is that you need not choose between them. To get a truly holistic view of your customer experience and satisfaction, it would be advisable to use all CX metrics at different touchpoints (You can learn more on our CX Strategy and management hub). 

NPS® helps track how a respondent feels about your product or brand as a whole, while CES surveys help you understand and solve customer issues at various touch points with your product or service. 

You can leverage both of these metrics to their full potential by placing them at key touchpoints to uncover actionable insights into customer behavior and loyalty.

Related reading

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More articles on related metrics

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.