A customer effort score (CES) reveals how easy it is for customers to interact with your company, whether that relates to making a purchase, getting support or resolving an issue. 

Customers rate the ease of their experience on a scale (typically 1–5), and lower scores mean less effort.

By tracking your CES, you can spot friction points in your customer journey, such as a complicated checkout process or slow support, and improve them. Research shows that reducing effort is one of the best ways to build customer loyalty.

Customers who experience low-effort interactions are significantly more likely to remain loyal. Businesses can use CES to pinpoint areas in the customer journey where customers encounter friction, such as during onboarding or after interactions with customer support. Using these insights, companies can then make targeted improvements to reduce churn and drive long-term relationships.

To start measuring customer effort today, try our CES survey template. Alternatively, type a short prompt about your business and your CES-measurement goals and let AI create a custom survey for you.

Look for CES survey software that makes it easy for you to get real-time feedback so that you can spot high-effort interactions and move quickly to prevent churn. For example, with SurveyMonkey, you can set up real-time alerts with Slack or integrate with CRMs like Salesforce to automate customer follow-ups whenever you receive a high score. 

It’s also essential to look for software that’s intuitive to use, both for your team and for your customers. This will help to increase response rates by making it quick and easy for your customers to complete your survey. And when CES survey platforms are easy to use, you’ll see higher adoption across teams that play a role in the customer experience, such as operations and product teams. 

Explore all SurveyMonkey plan features today. 

A CSAT score focuses on measuring overall satisfaction, whereas a CES typically focuses on the ease of specific interactions. A customer effort score is logged immediately after a customer interaction with your brand, whereas a CSAT score is logged across a wider range of touchpoints. Businesses use both metrics to build up a comprehensive picture of CX and identify where they need to improve processes.