What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric that measures how easy it is for customers to interact with a company, particularly when seeking support or completing tasks. Research shows that reducing effort is a stronger predictor of loyalty than delighting customers.

How CES Works

CES is typically collected through post-interaction surveys:

Question: How easy was it to get your issue resolved?

• Scale: Usually 1-7 (Very Difficult to Very Easy)
• Alternative: Agreement scale with effort statement

Why Effort Matters

Research from CEB (now Gartner) found:

• 96% of high-effort customers become disloyal
• Only 9% of low-effort customers become disloyal
• Reducing effort has more impact than delighting

What Creates High Effort

• Repeating information: Explaining issue multiple times
• Channel switching: Forced to use different channels
• Multiple contacts: Issue not resolved first time
• Long waits: Time in queue or on hold
• Finding help: Difficulty locating support
• Complex processes: Too many steps to resolution

CES Benchmarks

• 1-3: High effort (problem area)
• 4: Neutral
• 5-7: Low effort (good experience)

Top companies target 6+ average CES.

CES vs CSAT vs NPS

• CES: How easy was this interaction
• CSAT: How satisfied with this interaction
• NPS: Overall loyalty to company

All three provide different insights.

Reducing Effort with AI

AI dramatically reduces customer effort:

• Instant answers: No waiting in queue
• First contact resolution: Solved immediately
• Context retention: No repeating information
• Easy access: Available in any channel
• Natural interaction: No complex menu navigation

Maven AGI Difference: We obsess over effort reduction. When customers ask a question and get an accurate answer in seconds, that is low effort. With 90%+ resolution and instant response, we eliminate the friction that drives customers away.

Book a demo to reduce customer effort.