Customer Effort Score (CES): The Essential KPI Every Customer Success Team Should Track

Your product looks strong. Your effort score says otherwise

Customers judge your business by how easy it is to get the help they need. If resolving an issue or getting answers feels like work, satisfaction drops, escalations increase, and churn soon follows.

Customer Effort Score (CES) puts this reality into a single, powerful metric. It reveals how much work customers are doing to resolve issues, complete tasks, or achieve their goals. By tracking CES carefully, you can uncover friction points that remain hidden in broad averages or dashboard summaries.

What is Customer Effort Score, really?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is determined by a short survey question posed right after an interaction. The classic question is: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.

You select the response scale. Many teams use a 1 to 7 scale, where 1 means strongly disagree and 7 means strongly agree, while others prefer 1 to 5. What matters most is staying consistent in your approach.

Two simple ways to calculate Customer Effort Score

• Average score: The sum of all survey scores divided by the total number of responses.
• Easy share: The percentage of responses that rate the experience as a 5 to 7 on a 7-point scale.

Select one calculation method and report the results weekly. Patterns and trends are more valuable than a single data point.

CES vs CSAT vs NPS

CSAT measures satisfaction after an interaction. NPS gauges long-term customer loyalty. CES, however, measures effort, spotlighting process friction in your customer journey.

High CSAT can disguise customer effort. Even a satisfied customer may have needed to jump through hoops to resolve their issue. CES exposes this hidden work and points you to the steps that need refinement.

Measure CES without survey fatigue

Ask at the right moment

• Deliver the survey in-product immediately after a task completes, or fails.
• Trigger surveys after support tickets are resolved, not in the middle of an interaction thread.
• Delay the survey by 10 to 30 minutes to avoid impulsive, less reflective responses.

Keep the survey short

• Use only one scale-based question.
• Offer an optional free-text box to capture context or comments.

Sample smart

• Limit survey requests to once every 30 days per user.
• Rotate communication channels to capture feedback from both email and chat interactions.
• Tag responses by product area, issue type, and customer plan level.

Short, focused surveys yield higher response rates and reduce bias toward only extreme experiences.

Make the metric actionable

Begin by segmenting your CES results. Compare effort scores across channels, queues, agent groups, and product areas. This will highlight where friction peaks.

Tag the reasons

• Missing or confusing help documentation.
• Authentication or billing difficulties.
• Slow initial responses or multiple hand-offs.
• Policy confusion or unclear eligibility requirements.

Pair the score with direct customer feedback. Look for comments highlighting broken processes or confusing steps, rather than general opinions about your brand.

Set thresholds and alerts

• Trigger managerial reviews for scores of 1 to 3.
• Create a Jira or Linear ticket if the same negative tag appears three times in one week.
• Discuss the five most critical verbatim comments in team standups.

Practical ways to lower effort this quarter

• Reduce first response times on all channels. Discover how AI can help decrease response times with context-driven, clear drafting.
• Use shorter replies that start with clear next steps and remove unnecessary filler.
• Limit each action to one link. Avoid pages overloaded with choices that force customers to make decisions unnecessarily.
• Prefill forms using data you already have, and request new information only when absolutely needed.
• Show progress bars on multi-step flows, and hide optional fields unless required.
• Send proactive updates for lengthy requests so customers don’t have to ask, “Any update?”
• Offer one-click reauthentication after session timeouts, eliminating the need for password searches.
• Localize key communication templates, but avoid strictly mechanical translations that can obscure intended meaning.
• Proactively engage at-risk users. For more strategies, see this guide to using AI for customer retention.

Every step you remove or streamline boosts your CES and eases the pressure on your support team.

Choosing tools that support low-effort service

Effective CES tracking and reduction require three layers: survey capture, workflow context, and writing assistance. Ensure all tools integrate seamlessly with your CRM or help desk.

Survey capture

Use in-app survey tools or analytic solutions, options like Qualtrics, Delighted, or built-in modals can all work well.

Workflow context

Make sure agents always see recent history where they work. Salesforce Service Cloud, Zendesk, HubSpot, and Intercom all bring critical context to the agent workspace.

Writing assistance

Clear, actionable writing lowers customer effort. Your drafting solution should propose concise next steps, embed the right links, and match your chosen tone.

• Intercom’s AI features integrate with their inbox to suggest efficient replies.
• Typewise not only integrates with your CRM, email, and chat, but also drafts concise responses, surfaces the right articles, and maintains a consistent tone. Furthermore, Typewise can learn your style without sending sensitive data elsewhere.
• Zendesk’s AI capabilities are designed for use within their ticketing flows.

Choose the tool that best fits your technical stack and data privacy requirements. Run A/B tests to confirm CES improvements before adopting widely.

Benchmarks, targets, and sample calculations

Industry standards fluctuate depending on the market and user base. The safest bet is to focus on consistently improving your own baseline data.

Here’s an example of applying the aforementioned calculating techniques, using a 7-point scale:

• Responses this month: 1,200
• Average score: 5.3
• Easy share: 760 responses scored 5 to 7, so 63.3 percent

If last month’s easy share was 58 percent, you’ve reduced friction. Investigate which tags or channels contributed most to this improvement.

Targets that keep teams focused

• Raise easy share by 3 to 5 percentage points each quarter.
• Narrow the gap between chat and email scores to less than 5 points.
• Halve the number of low CES scores associated with authentication hurdles.

Connect each target to specific projects. Avoid setting numeric goals unless you have corresponding improvement initiatives in place.

Common pitfalls to avoid

• Leading wording: Avoid questions that prime customers with apologies or promises.
• Shifting scales: Do not change from a 1–5 scale to a 1–7 scale mid-quarter; keep your measurement consistent.
• Single-channel bias: If you only survey via email, you’ll miss critical in-app and chat friction.
• Bribes: External incentives can distort scores and undermine the value of honest feedback.
• Ignoring verbatim: The numbers indicate where to investigate, but customer comments reveal what truly needs fixing.

Review and stress-test the survey experience every quarter from a new user’s perspective.

How Typewise helps you cut effort in the flow of work

Your team already works in CRM, email, and chat daily. Typewise meets them precisely in these environments. It guides agents to draft clear replies that lead with actionable steps, condenses text, pulls in the most relevant links, and mirrors your brand’s tone.

Because Typewise operates directly within your existing tools, agents always have customer context on hand, reducing unnecessary back-and-forth and minimizing rework. When agents do less rework, customers face fewer steps, driving your CES higher.

Conclusion

Customer Effort Score turns friction into a KPI your team can actually lead. Measure it thoughtfully, fix the specific steps that increase effort, and measure again to track your progress.

If you want to deliver clearer replies and remove unnecessary steps for your customers, reach out to Typewise. We’re eager to share proven playbooks and help you raise your CES in the next quarter.

FAQ