Why Customer Effort Score Matters When Measuring CX

Imagine this: you’re a customer trying to resolve an issue or make a purchase, but every step feels like a hurdle. Long wait times, unclear instructions, multiple handoffs — you start to wonder if it’s worth the effort.

Whether you know it or not, your business is the one making things harder than they need to be. The result? 96% of customers facing these high-effort interactions won’t stick around.

Your customers expect seamless experiences, and your customer effort score (CES) provides the insights you need to deliver them.

Below, we give you the complete guide to optimizing your customer effort score and creating loyal, happy customers.

What Is Customer Effort Score?

Your customer effort score directly measures the amount of effort customers need to exert when interacting with your business. This metric quantifies the effort required for activities such as completing a purchase, accessing information, or resolving support issues.

The measurement process is straightforward: after a customer interaction, you’ll ask them to rate their experience on a scale, typically from 1 to 7, where 1 indicates “very easy” (less effort) and 7 indicates “very difficult” (more effort).

These types of survey questions and customer effort score calculations provide actionable insights into your respondents’ experiences. They help you learn, from your customers’ perspective, where your customer experience needs improvement.

Why CES Matters for Businesses Claiming to Be “Customer-Obsessed”

Companies that claim to be “customer-obsessed” must prove it with data.

Customer effort score is the key metric that exposes whether you’re truly reducing friction and delivering on that promise.

The following factors show that effort directly predicts customer behavior, making CES essential for validating and improving your customer experience strategy.

Direct correlation with customer loyalty

The data is clear: Customers with a high-effort service interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% of those who have a low-effort experience.

This direct relationship between effort and loyalty demonstrates why reducing customer friction must be a priority in your customer experience strategy.

Predictor of churn

Effort is a leading indicator of customer churn. When customers must work too hard to meet their goals, they seek alternatives. Measuring CES helps identify and address these risks before they harm retention.

More predictive than CSAT or NPS for problem resolution

While net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) provide valuable insights, the customer effort score demonstrates superior predictive power for customer behavior after support interactions.

The level of effort required to resolve an issue directly influences repurchase decisions more than satisfaction alone.

CES is 1.8x more accurate than CSAT and NPS in predicting customer behavior, particularly in service environments.

Improves CX

Focusing on CES naturally drives improvements across your entire customer journey.

By identifying and eliminating friction points, you create more efficient processes that benefit both customers and your organization. This systematic approach to effort reduction transforms isolated touchpoints into a cohesive, streamlined experience that consistently meets customer expectations with minimal friction.

Boosts operational efficiency

CES data identifies operational inefficiencies impacting customer satisfaction and your bottom line.

When you have a good customer effort score, you decrease support costs and increase customer retention and customer success rates. Organizations prioritizing effort reduction typically see a 20% decrease decrease in service costs alongside improved customer loyalty metrics, creating a direct path to increased profitability.

How to Calculate CES

Calculating your customer effort score is straightforward and highly effective for understanding how much effort customers need to exert when interacting with your business.

Here’s how it works:

1. Choose a survey question

The CES survey typically asks customers to rate their experience with a specific interaction. A common question is:

“How easy was it to [complete the task/resolution]?”

You can tailor the question to fit the context, such as completing a purchase, resolving a support issue, or finding information.

2. Use a consistent scale

Customers rate their experience on a numerical scale, most often from 1 to 7:

1 = Very easy (low effort) 7 = Very difficult (high effort)

3. Collect responses

Survey customers immediately after key interactions. You can do this through support calls, online transactions, or onboarding processes. Timing is crucial to ensure accurate feedback while the experience is fresh in your customers’ minds.

4. Calculate the average CES

Once you’ve gathered responses, calculate the average score:

CES Average = Sum of All Scores/Number of Respondents

For example, if 50 respondents give a total score of 150, your CES is 3.0.

5. Analyze results

A lower CES indicates less effort and a better experience, while a higher score signals friction. Break down results by customer segments, channels, or interaction types to uncover trends and prioritize areas for improvement.

By consistently measuring CES, you gain actionable insights to identify pain points, optimize processes, and deliver seamless customer experiences. This metric not only helps you retain customers but also builds the foundation for long-term loyalty and satisfaction.

Strategies for Improving Your Customer Effort Score

Improving your customer effort score requires strategic action across every customer touchpoint.

While many organizations focus on surface-level fixes, meaningful CES improvement demands a comprehensive approach that changes the culture around how customers interact with your business.

The following proven strategies will help you reduce friction and create effortless experiences that drive loyalty.

Simplify support processes

Your knowledge base must provide clear, actionable solutions to common problems, with step-by-step guides and troubleshooting flows.

Implement effective self-service options and intelligent chatbots to handle routine inquiries, ensuring they can accurately interpret customer intent and provide relevant solutions. This approach reduces customer effort while freeing your support team to handle more complex issues that require human expertise and judgment.

Train agents for faster resolution

Your customer support team needs comprehensive resources and authority to resolve issues efficiently.

Provide your customer service team with real-time customer data, detailed product knowledge, and clear escalation paths so they can deliver an exceptional customer service experience.

Give them the autonomy to make decisions that prevent multiple customer contacts for the same issue, such as being able to offer appropriate compensation or solutions without requiring manager approval for routine matters.

Use omnichannel communication

Today’s customers expect seamless communication across all channels.

Your support infrastructure must maintain conversation context whether customers reach you through phone, email, chat, or social media, ensuring their history and preferences follow them across platforms. This consistency significantly reduces customer effort by eliminating the need to repeat information or restart conversations when switching channels.

Proactively reach out to customers

Anticipate customer needs and address them before they become issues.

Send automated updates about order status, potential service impacts, and relevant product information. This proactive approach on your behalf means customers don’t need to contact support, as they are informed about relevant changes, upcoming maintenance, or potential issues that might affect their user experience.

Optimize website navigation and forms

Your digital platforms must prioritize user efficiency through intuitive design and minimal friction.

Eliminate unnecessary form fields, streamline navigation paths, and ensure your search functionality delivers relevant results with smart filters and suggestions.

Every click must clearly move the customer toward their goal, with typical tasks accessible within one to two interactions.

Leverage feedback for continuous improvement

Implement a systematic approach to collecting and analyzing customer feedback through multiple channels.

Your CES survey responses will reveal patterns in customer effort, allowing you to identify and address pain points before they impact your business metrics. Use customer effort scores to prioritize improvements and measure the impact of changes on customer satisfaction.

Personalize the experience

Use customer data to create more efficient interactions by leveraging purchase history, previous support interactions, and stated preferences.

By anticipating needs and tailoring responses based on a customer’s specific situation and history with your company, you can provide a more relevant solution and reduce the time needed to resolve their issue.

How Nextiva’s Platform Can Help Improve CES

Nextiva’s unified communications platform delivers the essential tools you need to reduce customer effort and boost loyalty.

By combining AI-powered automation, omnichannel integration, and real-time analytics, the platform transforms fragmented customer interactions into seamless experiences that drive measurable CES improvements.

Omnichannel communication

Nextiva’s platform ensures consistent customer experience across all communication channels, including phone, email, chat, and social media.

This integration eliminates any need for customers to repeat information, significantly reducing effort in multi-touch interactions.

The system maintains full conversation history and context across channels, enabling seamless transitions between touchpoints while preserving all relevant customer data and interaction details.

AI-Powered customer support

Nextiva’s AI capabilities enable intelligent routing and automated responses for common inquiries, with advanced natural language processing to understand customer intent.

This technology ensures customers receive immediate assistance while reducing the workload on your support team. The AI system learns from interactions to improve response accuracy and can seamlessly escalate complex issues to human agents when needed.

Integrated CRM for personalized service

Nextiva’s CRM integration provides agents with comprehensive customer data during every interaction, including purchase history, previous support tickets, and communication preferences.

This immediate access to relevant information enables faster resolution times and a more personalized service. Agents can see the complete customer journey and make informed decisions based on historical context.

Proactive customer engagement

Nextiva’s automated workflow systems enable systematic outreach based on customer behavior and needs, using triggers like usage patterns and service milestones.

This proactive approach prevents issues before they require customer effort to resolve by identifying potential problems through predictive analytics and initiating contact with helpful solutions or information.

Real-time analytics

Nextiva’s analytics tools provide immediate visibility into CES trends and potential issues through customizable dashboards and automated alerts.

This real-time data enables quick responses to emerging problems before they impact customer loyalty, providing detailed customer experience metrics on response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction across all channels.

Don’t Neglect Your CES

Your customer effort score serves as a critical indicator of future customer behavior. Every point of friction in your customer experience directly impacts loyalty and retention. Research clearly shows that customers who experience high-effort interactions will seek alternatives.

Implementing the right technology, such as Nextiva’s comprehensive platform, provides the foundation for reducing customer effort. However, you must also commit to continuously measuring, analyzing, and improving your customer service metrics.