CES

CES (Customer Effort Score) asks how much effort the customer had to put in to accomplish something. The standard phrasing is: "The company made it easy to handle my issue." Respondents rate agreement from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Research consistently shows that reducing customer effort is one of the strongest predictors of loyalty and churn reduction.

When to use it

Use CES when:

• you want to measure friction in a specific process (support resolution, checkout, sign-up, self-service)
• you suspect customers are satisfied with the outcome but frustrated by how hard it was to get there
• you are optimising a flow for ease of use

How to configure it

Open the question in the builder and expand Settings:

• Scale — 5-point or 7-point agreement scale.
• Question text — customise to fit the specific process, e.g. "SurveyKar made it easy to set up my first survey."
• Scale labels — from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree" (default) or custom labels.
• Required — force a selection before the respondent can continue.

Tips

Tip — Use CES alongside CSAT for support tickets. A customer can rate the resolution as satisfying (high CSAT) but still found the process difficult (low CES). Both signals together tell you whether you solved the problem AND whether it was painless.

Tip — The lower the CES score, the more effort the customer experienced. A low CES score is a strong predictor of churn — prioritise reducing effort in the flows where CES is lowest.