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    Customer Effort Score calculator

    Calculate your Customer Effort Score from 1–7 agreement ratings — as an average and as the percentage of customers who found it easy.

    How many people chose each answer to “The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.”

    Customer Effort Score

    5.48 / 7

    80.0% found it easy (5–7) · 200 responses

    • Easy (5–7)80.0%
    • Neutral (4)10.0%
    • Difficult (1–3)10.0%

    Found it easy

    80.0%

    Found it difficult

    10.0%

    What is Customer Effort Score (CES)?

    Customer Effort Score measures how easy it was for a customer to get something done with you — resolve a support issue, return an item, book an appointment. The idea behind it is simple: effort is one of the strongest drivers of whether a service interaction leaves a customer loyal or annoyed, so it is worth measuring on its own.

    The most common modern form asks customers to agree or disagree with one statement, “The company made it easy for me to handle my issue”, on a 7-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

    How CES is calculated

    Two conventions are in common use. The calculator shows both.

    1. Average score

    CES = Sum of all ratings ÷ Number of responses

    On the 7-point agreement scale, higher is better

    2. Percentage who found it easy

    CES (%) = Responses rated 5–7 ÷ Number of responses × 100

    Ratings of 5, 6 or 7 count as agreeing it was easy

    Worked example

    200 customers answer: 4, 6, 10, 20, 40, 70 and 50 people choose 1 through 7. The sum of ratings is 1×4 + 2×6 + 3×10 + 4×20 + 5×40 + 6×70 + 7×50 = 1,096.

    1,096 ÷ 200 = 5.48 · (40 + 70 + 50) ÷ 200 = 80% found it easy

    Check the direction of your scale

    Some older CES surveys ask “How much effort did you personally have to put forth?”, where a low number is good. This calculator assumes the agreement scale, where 7 is best. Don’t compare scores across the two versions.

    When to use CES, and what to do with it

    • Ask right after the interaction — a closed ticket, a completed booking, a finished return — while the experience is fresh.
    • Always add “What made it easy or hard?” as an open question. The number tells you where; the comments tell you why.
    • Segment it by channel, issue type or team. A decent overall score often hides one process that is painful.
    • Use it alongside CSAT and NPS. CSAT asks how satisfied people were; NPS asks about loyalty overall; CES asks how hard you made it.

    Frequently asked questions

    On the 7-point agreement scale, either average all the ratings, or divide the number of 5, 6 and 7 ratings by the total and multiply by 100. Both are common; state which one you report.

    Higher is better on the agreement scale. There is no universal benchmark because question wording and scale vary; the most useful comparison is your own score over time, measured the same way.

    The common modern version is “The company made it easy for me to handle my issue”, answered from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), followed by an open question asking why.

    They measure different things. CES measures effort in a specific interaction, CSAT measures satisfaction with it, and NPS measures overall loyalty. Many teams track CES and CSAT per interaction and NPS periodically.

    You can, but results are not comparable with 7-point CES. Pick one scale and keep it, or your trend line breaks.

    Start with a template

    Collect the responses this calculator needs with a ready-made survey you can edit and send for free.

    Other free calculators

    Sample SizeWork out how many survey responses you need for results you can trust, at any confidence level and margin of error.NPSTurn promoter, passive and detractor counts into a Net Promoter Score, with the breakdown behind the number.CSATCalculate a customer satisfaction score from 1-5 ratings, using the standard top-two-box method.Margin of ErrorSee how precise your survey results really are, given the sample you actually collected.A/B SignificanceCheck whether the difference between two variants is real or just noise, with p-value, confidence interval and power.P-ValueConvert a z, t or chi-square statistic into a p-value for one- or two-tailed tests.Confidence IntervalFind the range a survey percentage or average is likely to fall in for the whole population.Response RateWork out your response rate and completion rate from invitations, bounces and completed responses.
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