CES survey template
Customer Effort Score (CES) helps you understand how much effort customers have to put into completing a specific interaction with your business.
This could be resolving a support issue, completing a purchase, finding information, using a product feature, or getting started with your service.
Our CES survey template gives you a ready-made starting point for measuring customer effort. Customize the questions and rating scale based on the interaction you want to evaluate.
What is a CES survey?
A CES survey measures the effort customers experience when completing a specific task or interaction.
Unlike CSAT, which measures satisfaction, or NPS, which measures loyalty, CES focuses on one thing: how easy was the experience?
For example, after a customer contacts your support team, you could ask:
How easy was it to get your issue resolved today?
Customers then respond using your chosen rating scale.
The most useful CES surveys are transactional. Instead of asking customers to rate their entire relationship with your company, ask them about a specific interaction while the experience is still fresh.
What Does a CES Survey Measure?
1. Ease of resolving an issue
Find out whether customers were able to get their problem resolved without unnecessary steps, waiting, or repetition.
2. Ease of using your product
Understand whether customers can complete important tasks or use specific features without confusion.
3. Ease of finding information
Measure how easily customers can find answers in your website, help center, documentation, or knowledge base.
4. Ease of completing a process
Evaluate processes such as checkout, onboarding, registration, returns, cancellations, or account management.
5. Customer support effort
Understand how easy it was for customers to contact your support team and get the help they needed.
CES survey questions
The right questions depend on the interaction you're measuring. Here are some examples you can adapt for your survey.
Customer support CES questions
- How easy was it to get your issue resolved?
- How easy was it to contact our support team?
- How easy was it to find the information you needed?
- How much effort did you have to put into resolving your issue?
Product CES questions
- How easy was it to complete this task?
- How easy was it to use this feature?
- How easy was it to get started with our product?
- How easy was it to find what you were looking for?
Website CES questions
- How easy was it to find the information you needed?
- How easy was it to complete your task?
- How easy was it to navigate our website?
Transactional CES questions
- How easy was it to complete your purchase?
- How easy was it to return your order?
- How easy was it to update your account?
- How easy was it to complete the checkout process?
You don't need to ask all of these questions. Choose the questions that match the customer interaction you're trying to measure.
When Should You Send a CES Survey?
Timing is especially important for customer effort surveys. Send the survey shortly after the interaction you want customers to evaluate.
After a customer support interaction
Ask customers how easy it was to get their issue resolved. This can help you identify unnecessary transfers, repeated questions, long wait times, or other sources of friction.
After onboarding
Find out how easy it was for new customers to get started with your product or service.
After using a product feature
Measure the effort involved in completing a particular task or using a specific feature.
After a purchase
Use CES to understand how easy the checkout and purchasing process was.
After finding information
Ask visitors how easy it was to find the information they needed on your website, help center, or documentation.
After a return or cancellation
These processes can involve multiple steps. A CES survey can help you identify where customers encounter unnecessary friction.
How to Calculate CES
The calculation depends on the rating scale you use.
For a 1–7 scale, you can calculate the average CES score by adding all customer effort scores and dividing the total by the number of responses.
CES = Total effort scores ÷ Number of responses
For example, if five customers give scores of 6, 5, 7, 4, and 6:
CES = 28 ÷ 5 = 5.6
How you interpret the score depends on your question wording and rating scale. The important thing is to use the same methodology consistently so you can compare results over time.
How to use CES survey results?
Collecting customer effort scores is only the first step. The real value comes from identifying what's creating friction and doing something about it.
Find friction points
Look for interactions with consistently poor effort scores. These could point to confusing processes, difficult interfaces, long wait times, or unnecessary steps.
Identify problematic processes
Compare CES across different stages of the customer journey. You may find that onboarding is easy while cancellation or support requires significantly more effort.
Segment your responses
Break down results by customer type, product, plan, channel, location, or journey stage to identify patterns hidden in your overall score.
Combine scores with comments
An effort score tells you how easy or difficult an interaction was. An open-ended follow-up can help explain why.
Prioritize improvements
Focus on friction points that affect a large number of customers or have a significant impact on the overall experience.
Track CES over time
Measure customer effort before and after making changes. This helps you determine whether your improvements are actually making interactions easier.
SurveySparrow Features and Benefits
CES Module
As a survey platform, SurveySparrow has a CES module to help businesses collect and analyze customer effort scores efficiently. This module can be accessed when a user starts a new form/ survey. It includes features such as customizable and conversational CES survey templates with multiple question types and designs, real-time reporting, and analytics to help businesses identify areas where they can reduce customer effort and improve the overall customer experience. The data can also be integrated with other visualization tools, like Power BI for analysis.
Benefits:
- Provides an efficient and standardized way to measure customer effort.
- By gaining insights into the factors contributing to customer effort, businesses can identify pain points in their processes or interactions.
- The flexibility to integrate CES surveys into various touchpoints of the customer journey helps in obtaining a comprehensive view of customer experiences.
Rating Type Questions
It provides versatile options for collecting ratings through various types of rating scales and slider-type questions. Additionally, you can use matrix-type rating questions to gather information about different parameters in a single question. This flexibility allows you to tailor your survey questions to specific interactions and scenarios.
Benefits:
- Collect ratings in multiple ways (scales, sliders, matrices).
- Customize rating questions for specific touchpoints.
- Gather detailed information about various aspects of the customer experience.
Executive Dashboards
Executive dashboard provides a comprehensive view of your survey data. The dashboards are designed to be user-friendly and interactive, allowing executives and decision-makers to gain insights at a glance. You can analyze CES scores, trends, and other key metrics in real-time, facilitating data-driven decision-making.
Benefits:
- Real-time visibility into CES scores and trends.
- User-friendly interface for executives.
- In-depth analysis of survey data for informed decision-making.
Interactive and User-Friendly Design
The platform offers a smooth and engaging experience for survey respondents, ensuring higher completion rates. The user-friendly design extends to both the creation of surveys and the analysis of survey results, making it easy for users to navigate and derive actionable insights.
Benefits:
- Enhanced respondent engagement and higher completion rates.
- Easy and intuitive survey creation process.
- User-friendly interface for analyzing survey results.
Website Embed
With SurveySparrow’s Website Embed feature, you can seamlessly embed surveys anywhere on your website. Whether as a pop-up card, a chatbot, or inline within your site’s content, you can collect actionable data from visitors. This feature enables you to gather feedback from customers while they are actively engaging with your website, helping you understand their experience in real-time.
Benefits:
- Collect feedback directly from website visitors.
- Embed surveys as pop-ups, chatbots, or inline for flexibility.
- Obtain actionable data to improve the overall website experience.
FAQs
1. What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?
CES is a metric that measures the amount of effort customers exert to interact with a product or service. It is designed to assess the ease or difficulty customers experience during various touchpoints in their journey with a brand.
2. Why is CES important?
CES is crucial because it provides insights into the ease of customer interactions. A high CES indicates a user-friendly experience, fostering customer loyalty, while a low CES suggests potential issues that may lead to customer dissatisfaction and churn.
Check this Customer Exit Survey Template out!
3. How is CES different from other customer experience metrics like NPS and CSAT?
CES measures the effort customers put into interactions, while Net Promoter Score (NPS) gauges customer loyalty, and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures overall satisfaction. Each metric provides a unique perspective on the customer experience.
4. When should I use CES surveys?
CES surveys are most effective when conducted after specific customer interactions, such as product purchases, customer support interactions, onboarding sessions, or reading knowledge base articles. They can be both transactional and relational in nature.
5. What are some examples of CES survey questions?
Examples of CES questions include:
- “On a scale of 1–7, how do you agree that [company name] made it easy for me to solve my issue today?”
- “How much effort did it take to solve your problem?”
- “How easy was it to handle your request with [company name]?”
- “On a scale of 1-10, how much effort did you personally have to put forth to resolve your issue with [product or service]ce]?”
- “Thinking about your most recent experience, how straightforward was it to get the assistance you needed from [company name]?”
- “Did [company name] make it simple for you to navigate through their website or app and find what you were looking for?”
- “On a scale of 1–5, how would you rate the level of effort required on your part to complete your purchase/service with [company name]?”
6. How is the CES score calculated?
The CES score is calculated by summing up all the ratings given by users and dividing it by the total number of responses. The result is then multiplied by 100 to get the CES percentage.
7. Can CES surveys be both transactional and relational?
Yes, while CES surveys are mainly transactional, relational CES surveys can be conducted periodically to obtain an average customer effort score over time.
8. What are some best practices for conducting CES surveys?
Best practices include avoiding complex questions, adding open-ended questions for detailed feedback, optimizing surveys for mobile devices, and automating surveys to trigger after various customer interactions.
9. How can I analyze CES survey results?
CES survey results can be analyzed using customer feedback software with reporting features. You can view graphical representations, filter insights based on time and completion rates, create custom widgets, and export reports for further analysis.
10. Is there a recommended scale for CES surveys?
CES surveys typically use a 7-point Likert scale ranging from ‘Very Difficult’ to ‘Very Easy’ or ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree.’ The scale points can be adjusted based on specific survey requirements.
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