What is customer effort score?

Why it matters

Effort is the thing customers actually remember. Nobody recalls a delightful password reset, but everyone remembers the one that took four messages, two channels, and a repeated account verification. Reducing effort is usually cheaper than increasing delight and has a stronger link to retention.

What to know

• Effort is driven by channel switching, repeating information, and waiting, more than by agent friendliness.
• CES is best collected immediately after resolution, while the work the customer did is still fresh.
• A high-effort contact often looks fine in ticket data because the total handle time is unremarkable.
• Asking customers to repeat context after a handoff is the single largest avoidable source of effort.
• CES pairs naturally with first contact resolution, since low FCR nearly always means high effort.

How to calculate it

An example

Example: a customer chats with a bot, is told to email, emails, is asked to verify their identity again, then waits a day. The issue is resolved correctly and the CSAT score is positive, but the effort score is terrible, and that customer is measurably less likely to renew.

Common mistakes

• Tracking CSAT only and assuming it captures effort
• Measuring effort per ticket rather than per customer journey
• Ignoring the effort added by identity checks and channel switches
• Treating a resolved outcome as evidence that effort was low

Questions