What is Customer Effort Score (CES)? Definition, Formula & Benchmarks

Definition

Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric that measures how much effort a customer had to spend to accomplish their goal — resolving a problem, completing a purchase, finding information, getting support. Unlike CSAT (which measures satisfaction) or NPS (which measures loyalty), CES focuses specifically on friction. Research has shown that low-effort experiences predict customer retention better than satisfaction scores do, especially in transactional contexts.

The CES formula

Modern CES uses a percentage form:

CES % = (Low-Effort Responses ÷ Total Responses) × 100

Older CES implementations used the simple average score instead of the percentage. The percentage form is more comparable to CSAT and easier to communicate, so most contemporary platforms have moved to it.

On the classical 1-7 agreement scale ("the company made it easy"):

Effortless / Low effort: 5-7 (agree, somewhat agree, strongly agree)
Neutral / Acceptable: 4
High effort: 1-3

Calculate your CES with the free calculator.

History

CES was introduced in 2010 by Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman of CEB (now Gartner) in the Harvard Business Review article "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers." The research, based on more than 75,000 customer interactions, found that the most reliable predictor of customer loyalty was not satisfaction or perceived delight — it was the effort customers had to expend. Customers who spent high effort to resolve issues were 4× more likely to defect, even when satisfied with the outcome.

The original question was phrased "How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?" on a 1-5 scale. The current standard is "The company made it easy for me to handle my issue" on a 1-7 agreement scale.

The 1-7 and 1-100 scales

Two scales are in common use:

1-7 (classic): 5-7 = low effort, 4 = neutral, 1-3 = high effort. The Gartner standard.
1-100 (kazva.bg variant): 80-100 = low effort, 50-79 = acceptable, below 50 = high effort. Captures finer differences and supports cross-platform comparability.

Both produce a comparable CES percentage that can be benchmarked across organisations and time.

What is a good CES?

Above 80% (or an average of 5.5+ on a 1-7 scale) is considered excellent. Industry baselines (Gartner, Harvard Business Review):

SaaS support: 65-80%
Financial services: 60-75%
Telecommunications: 55-70%
Public services: 50-65%

The trend matters more than the absolute number. A CES that drops 10 points month-on-month signals operational friction even if the absolute score remains "good."

CES vs NPS vs CSAT

CES is one of three widely-used CX metrics, each answering a different question:

CES — "How easy was it?" Measures friction and effort.
CSAT — "How satisfied are you?" Measures satisfaction with a specific interaction.
NPS — "How likely are you to recommend us?" Measures long-term loyalty.

When to use CES

CES is best for:

Support contacts — phone, chat, ticket, email
Checkout and onboarding flows
Returns, refunds, and complaint processes
Password resets, account management, self-service
Any transactional moment where friction predicts churn

Less useful for:

Measuring overall brand sentiment (use NPS)
Comparing across products (use CSAT or NPS)
Evaluating delight or differentiation (no metric captures this well — use qualitative research)

Common mistakes

Surveying CES on irrelevant touchpoints. CES is for transactional moments where effort matters. Asking CES after a casual store visit produces noisy data.
Mixing the old and new formulas. Average score (1-5 or 1-7) and percentage CES are different metrics. Pick one convention and stay consistent.
Ignoring the asymmetry. A small drop in CES at a critical touchpoint predicts much higher churn than the same drop in CSAT.

Customer Effort Score (CES) — Glossary | kazva.bg