What is Customer Effort Score?
Converge Team
A metric measuring how easy it was for customers to get their issue resolved
What is Customer Effort Score?
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much effort a customer had to expend to resolve their issue. Typically surveyed with a question like "How easy was it to get your issue resolved?" on a 1-7 scale (1 = very difficult, 7 = very easy). Unlike CSAT (which measures satisfaction) or NPS (which measures loyalty), CES specifically targets friction in the support experience.
CES captures what satisfaction scores often miss: a customer might be satisfied with the outcome but frustrated by the process. If they had to explain their issue three times, navigate a confusing phone menu, or wait on hold before reaching someone, CES will reflect that effort even if the eventual resolution was good.
Why Customer Effort Score Matters
Gartner research found that 96% of customers who had high-effort support experiences became disloyal, compared to only 9% of those with low-effort experiences. Reducing effort is a stronger predictor of future loyalty than "delighting" customers. In other words, removing friction matters more than exceeding expectations.
CES highlights specific process failures that other metrics miss. A high CSAT but low CES means customers are getting answers but working too hard for them—being transferred between channels, repeating information, or navigating complex self-service flows. These are actionable problems you can fix.
Customer Effort Score in Practice
An insurance company surveyed CES after every support interaction and found that customers who started on one channel and were transferred to another scored 2.1 (high effort). Customers who resolved their issue on the original channel scored 5.8 (low effort). The fix was straightforward: they trained agents on the most common cross-department questions so fewer conversations needed transfers. CES improved from 4.2 to 5.5 overall.