What is Customer Effort Score?

In the search for a more predictive score, the Corporate Executive Board published research (2010) showing Customer Effort Score (CES) has a significantly stronger correlation with business performance.

What is Customer Effort Score?

Customer Effort Score is best used in B2B and has a stronger predictive performance. CES uses the same framework as NPS but asks the question “how easy was it to do business withus?” It’s, therefore, clearer what CES is measuring (the “hassle” factor) and customer quotes on “why did you score that way” tend to be more focused and actionable.

Both NPS and CES are used as part of a “metrics framework”.

What Customer Effort Score means for businesses?

Many organisations use some measure of customer satisfaction to gauge service success and drive service strategy. The assumption is that the more satisfied a customer is with their service interaction, the more loyal that customer will be. Instead, exceeding customer expectations does not lead to measurable loyalty gains at all.

A study of more than 97,000 consumers and business customers globally shows a weak relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. In fact, 20% of satisfied customers say they intend to leave their provider, while 28% of dissatisfied customers say they intend to stay. This data proves that customer satisfaction is a poor—and potentially dangerous—guide for gauging service strategy progress and resource allocation.
Most companies underestimate the value of simply meeting customer expectations and overestimate the value of exceeding them.

Customers simply want their questions answered or their product fixed so they can go back to their lives. They enjoy a delightful experience when they enter in a negative state, the service request is dealt with and resolved positively, but they quickly forget it, don’t factor it into future decisions, and expect no more and less from the company.