Monday, October 17, 2016
Customer Effort Score (CES): an indicator for measuring customer effort
In 2010, the Customer Effort Score was introduced in a Harvard Business Review publication under the title "Stop Trying to Delight your Customers".
This article is the fruit of research by a team of consultants and researchers from the American consulting firm CEB Global. Their study looked at the link between customer service and loyalty by interviewing customers who had interacted with a customer service department via any channel (email, chat, call center, website or voice server).
Two major conclusions emerge:
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- Customer delight alone no longer builds loyalty
- It's the company's ability to facilitate the Customer Experience that makes the difference
Customer Effort Score: an indicator to facilitate the Customer Experience and build loyalty
CES is far more correlated with repeat purchase intention than are CSAT (Overall Satisfaction) or NPS(read our article Net Promoter Score).
Indeed, competition forces companies to meet customer expectations to the maximum, which makes customers increasingly demanding. According to the authors' study, customers who are satisfied with a service will be classified as detractors if the effort required of them is too great.
That's why we're interested in the notion of effort. Indeed, in certain circumstances, "enchantment" exists only if the effort is low (for example, a sample offered with a purchase will enchant the customer. However, the effect will disappear if the queue at the checkout was too long).
It may be useful to use an open-ended question to find out more precisely what customers think of a stage in the customer journey that requires a great deal of effort. In this way, we can identify the negative points, with the aim of making this step more easily achievable.
Customer Effort Score: how is it measured?
When writing this article, the authors recommended the following formulation:
"How much effort did you have to put in to get your request processed?"
The customer answers on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the highest level of effort and 1 being the lowest).
To analyze the answers, simply average the results per question.
In this way, we can classify the different stages of the customer journey as follows:
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- Low effort: Average between 1 and 2
- Significant effort: Average between 2 and 3
- High effort: Average between 3 and 5
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However, in 2013, the authors received feedback from a number of companies in different countries and sectors that had implemented this indicator. They deduced that the term "effort" can be perceived differently from one country to another, due to its literal translation as well as the country's culture. This is why they repeated the exercise and concluded that the best way to ask the question is :
"The company made it easy for me to apply.
The customer responds according to the following scale:
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- Strongly disagree
- No agreement
- Somewhat disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Somewhat agree
- I agree.
- I couldn't agree more.
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Customer Effort Score: what are its limits?
The question asked to measure the CES does not concern the company in general, but rather one stage in the customer journey. This means that the company cannot compare itself to any other. For example, it's impossible to use CES to establish a company ranking. It is possible, however, to compare the CES of a customer journey stage between several companies.
It is therefore important not to neglect other indicators such as NPS and Overall Satisfaction. These two indicators complement the CES to ensure a good analysis of customer satisfaction.
