Customer Effect Score
What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?
Customer Effect Score (CES) is a metric that measures how much effort a customer has to exerct in order to get their problem solved. CES surveys ask customer a question, ‘on a scale of very easy to very difficult, how easy it was for you to interact with the company?’. After asking this question, the customers are asked to give scores ranging from 1 – 7 with & representing the highest level of agreement with the statement and 1 being the lowest.
If the customers are transferred to different agents, having to wait for a long time, repeat information or if they have to switch channels, it will be difficult for them to get their issue resolved and this increased effort will result in lower CES scores for a business. The more approachable you are for a customer, the higher your CES scores and vice versa.
Customer effort is one of the strongest drives for customer loyalty. Customers are more likely to leave your business after a bad customer interaction and will also possibly share about their experience with others, negatively influencing your brand image and affect future sales. CES questions are typically asked from a customer immediately after a customer interaction.
Background
CES was first introduced by Harvard Business Review article in which the author presented a research claiming that reducing the steps the customer has to take to get their problem solved is far superior than providing an extravagant service. Customer Retention Ratio and Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer are the prime reasons behing the popularity of CES.
However, just measuring CES is far from enough as it only measures a single support interaction. Customers may have a bad experience but they still may be likely to do business again. Therefore, CES should be used alongside NES and CSAT scores to get a more comprehensive view of the customer’s view of the business.
Usage
CES is has potential but it also has its limitations, however, it can be used to measure a customer’s experience with your business and along with that the option to measure their discrete experiences. We can help you in measuring the CES scores for your business by immediately sending a survey to all your customers after a customer interaction.
CSAT will be able to provide you a general view of your customer satisfaction whereas CES is more targeted in its approach and can help you gauge the effectiveness of a single support interaction with your customers.
At ChatPandas we deploy CES surveys immediately after a customer interaction or a touchpoint. Simply asking a customer how easy it was for them to interact with the company and get their issue resolved can also help you analyze customer trends. The questions can differ in their approach but their underlying principle remains the same. CES is an automated process with predefined scale and it can also help you identify if the customers will be back determining their loyalty proportion.
Advantages of CES
- It can predict future purchase behavior of consumer thus making it possible to identify customer loyalty ratio.
- It is an extremely easy to measure and an highly actionable metric which also allows to ask questions about other areas of your business like navigating your website.
- Customers are likely to fill a CES survey due to the simple question format,
- It increased customer loyalty and thus provides more chances for referral ratio.
- CES is mostly used because it precisely tells about one particular support interaction. CES can be used to gauge customer’s reaction to a new feature or a new product. Businesses can measure if their newly launched feature or product sits well with their customer base. In some ways, CES is similar to NPS (Net Promoter Score) due to its simplicity and ease of use. NPS asks if customers are likely to recommend them to a friend and then further categorizes them. CES and NPS are similar as they are highly actionable and customers are more likely to answer a single question than filling in surveys that require more effort like the CSAT surveys.
Limitations of CES
- One interaction fails to determine the overall satisfaction level a customer has with your product/service.
- Not able to segment buyers and where they are in the sales funnel.
- Unable to get a detailed customer feedback.
- Should be used in conjunction with other metrics like CSAT and to get a better knowledge of customers’ likes and dislikes and predict their future preferences.