What is a Customer Effort Score? Definition, Examples & Best Practices
Customer Effort Score, often shortened to CES, measures the amount of effort a customer feels they had to spend to get something done. A CES survey is usually sent after a specific interaction, such as contacting support, completing onboarding, making a purchase, returning an item or using a self-service flow.
The standard Customer Effort Score question is usually framed around ease. A common version is: “The company made it easy for me to resolve my issue.” Respondents answer on an agreement scale, often from 1 to 7, where a higher score means lower perceived effort.
CES sits within customer experience measurement alongside CSAT and NPS. CSAT measures satisfaction. NPS measures likelihood to recommend. CES focuses on friction. For CX leads, product managers and support teams, it is especially useful because it points to operational problems customers can feel, such as repeat contact, confusing instructions, poor hand-offs or unnecessary steps.
Where it comes from
Customer Effort Score became widely known through Dixon, Freeman and Toman’s 2010 Harvard Business Review article, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers.” Their argument was that service organisations create more loyalty by reducing effort than by trying to exceed expectations. CustomerSure summarises the original research base as 75,000 customer interactions. The same HBR work reported that 89 of 100 customer service heads said exceeding expectations was their main strategy, while 84% of customers said their expectations had not been exceeded in their most recent interaction.
The original CES question asked how much effort customers personally had to put in to handle a request. Dixon, Toman and DeLisi (2013) later popularised a more positively framed version in The Effortless Experience: “The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.” This version is commonly measured on a 1 to 7 agreement scale.
**The basic formula is: CES average = sum of all CES ratings divided by number of responses. **If 600 customers give a combined score of 3,180 on a 1 to 7 scale, the CES score is 3,180 divided by 600, which equals 5.3 out of 7.
Strengths and Weaknessses
CES is powerful because it is tied to action. High effort often means the business is making customers work too hard. Its limitation is that it can miss emotion, value perception and brand preference. A task can be easy but still unsatisfying, overpriced or poorly timed.
How to Calculate Customer Effort Score
There are two common Customer Effort Score calculation methods.
The first is the average-score method. This is the simplest approach when using a 1 to 5 or 1 to 7 scale.
Customer Effort Score = total of all CES ratings divided by total number of responses.
For example, a SaaS company sends a customer effort survey after support tickets close. It receives 250 responses on a 1 to 7 scale. The total of all ratings is 1,425. The CES score is 1,425 divided by 250, which equals 5.7 out of 7. If the scale is coded so that 7 means “strongly agree that it was easy”, then 5.7 suggests a relatively low-effort experience.
The second approach is the positive-response percentage. This is useful for executive reporting because it turns CES into a percentage.
Positive CES = number of respondents giving an easy or low-effort score divided by total responses, multiplied by 100.
For example, if 180 out of 250 respondents choose 6 or 7 on a 7-point ease scale, positive CES is 180 divided by 250, multiplied by 100, which equals 72%.
Average CES is better for tracking gradual movement over time. Positive-response CES is better for board packs, service-level reporting and comparison across teams.
Real-World Example
A UK broadband provider wants to reduce repeat contact in its billing support queue. It sends a CES survey after every resolved billing ticket for four weeks and receives 1,600 responses.
The average CES score is 4.6 out of 7. Positive-response CES, defined as scores of 6 or 7, is only 38%. When the CX team splits the results by issue type, “unexpected price increase” tickets score 3.9, while “payment date change” tickets score 5.8. Open-text comments show that customers are being transferred between billing and retention teams because agents cannot apply certain credits directly.
The provider gives first-line agents authority to apply credits up to £20 and rewrites the billing explanation email. Six weeks later, billing CES rises from 4.6 to 5.4, and repeat contact on billing tickets falls from 31% to 22%.
Sources Cited
CustomerSure (accessed 2026). “What is Customer Effort Score (CES), and How Do You Use It?” CustomerSure.
Dixon, M., Freeman, K. and Toman, N. (2010). “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers.” Harvard Business Review.
Dixon, M., Toman, N. and DeLisi, R. (2013). The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty. Portfolio.
McKinsey & Company (2024). “Where is Customer Care in 2024?” McKinsey & Company.
Qualtrics (accessed 2026). “Transactional Customer Effort Score (CES).” Qualtrics.
Qualtrics (2018). “Customer Effort Score (CES): How to Measure and Improve It.” Qualtrics.
Reichheld, F. F. (2003). “The One Number You Need to Grow.” Harvard Business Review.
Frequently Asked Questions
Customer Effort Score is a CX metric that measures how easy or difficult it was for a customer to complete a specific action. It is most often used after support, onboarding, purchase, return or self-service interactions. A higher score usually means the customer experienced less friction.
A CES survey is a short customer effort survey sent after a defined interaction. It normally includes one main Customer Effort Score question and one optional open-text follow-up. For example, a support team might ask customers whether the company made it easy to resolve their issue, then ask what could have made the process easier.
A good Customer Effort Score question is specific, recent and tied to a completed task. A common version is: “The company made it easy for me to resolve my issue.” For product teams, it can be adapted to “It was easy to complete onboarding” or “It was easy to find what I needed.”
To calculate Customer Effort Score, add all CES ratings and divide by the number of responses. If 100 customers give scores that total 560 on a 1 to 7 scale, the CES score is 5.6. Some teams also calculate the percentage of customers who gave an easy or low-effort rating.
A Customer Effort Score example is a support survey sent after a customer resolves a payment issue. The survey asks: “The company made it easy for me to resolve my payment issue.” If the customer selects 6 on a 1 to 7 scale, that response indicates relatively low effort and contributes to the average CES score.
CES is not the same as CSAT. CES measures how easy an experience was. CSAT measures how satisfied the customer felt. A customer might be satisfied because the issue was eventually resolved, but still report high effort because it required multiple calls, repeated explanations or confusing steps.
Customer Effort Score is one customer experience metric, but it is not the same as a general customer experience score. CES measures ease around a task or interaction. A broader customer experience score may combine satisfaction, loyalty, effort, sentiment, retention and behavioural signals.
CES is better than NPS when the goal is to improve a process, service interaction or product task. It helps teams find friction in support, onboarding, returns, checkout or self-service. NPS is better for tracking relationship-level advocacy. Many organisations use both because they answer different questions.