Customer effort score software and what to look for before you buy

Customer effort score, CES, comes from research published by Gartner's predecessor CEB, summarized in the Harvard Business Review article Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers. Its finding was that reducing the work customers do to solve a problem predicts loyalty better than delighting them. The standard question is a statement such as "the company made it easy for me to handle my issue", answered from strongly disagree to strongly agree on a 1 to 7 scale.

Software has to do four jobs well.

• Trigger the question right after the interaction, not a week later.
• Tie the answer to the customer and the ticket or order, so you can act on it.
• Report the score per touchpoint, so you can see that returns are harder than checkout.
• Explain why. A 3 tells you something was hard. It does not tell you which step.

Take a support team that sends the CES question after each closed ticket. In a month, 200 customers answer on the 1 to 7 scale.

The average is (7x52 + 6x44 + 5x34 + 4x28 + 3x20 + 2x12 + 1x10) divided by 200, which is 364 + 264 + 170 + 112 + 60 + 24 + 10 = 1,004, divided by 200 = 5.02. The percentage who answered 5 to 7 is (52 + 44 + 34) divided by 200 = 65 percent. Both are valid, as long as you use the same method every month. This is arithmetic on invented counts to show the method, not a benchmark.

Now the 42 customers who answered 1 to 3 are the ones to learn from. If each leaves a 30 second voice answer, you can read the themes across 42 recordings in minutes. If they leave nothing, you know that 21 percent had a hard time and not why.

Vendors change plans often, so check each current price list. The pricing model column is the part that tends to stay true.

A help desk add on wins when every interaction you care about is a ticket and you already pay for the platform. An enterprise suite wins when you run a program across web, store and phone with a dedicated analyst.

A survey tool such as Asked wins when you know the score is low and need the reason. A support lead links the survey from the ticket close email, customers tap a rating and say what was hard in 20 seconds, and the summary shows three themes behind most of the 1 to 3 answers. Voice matters here because frustrated customers will talk but rarely write. See voice surveys for how that works and customer feedback tool for the wider setup.

CES measures effort in one interaction. NPS measures loyalty across the relationship, and CSAT measures satisfaction with a moment. Use CES after tickets, onboarding steps and returns, NPS every quarter, and CSAT where the interaction ends in a human conversation. All three are one rating question, so the real difference between tools is what happens to the comments. For the product side of onboarding see onboarding survey software.

Expect three shapes. Per agent per month for help desk add ons, annual quoted contracts for enterprise suites, and per seat or response caps for survey platforms. A cap is the one to watch. A ticket volume of 3,000 a month with a 15 percent reply rate is 450 responses, which already fills a 500 response tier.

Asked is priced per workspace. Starter is $49 a month with 500 responses, Growth is $129 a month with 2,500 responses and 5 seats, and Business is $299 with 15 seats. Customers who answer never count as seats. See pricing for the full list.

On the common 1 to 7 agree scale, the average is often reported near 5 or above, and the share answering 5 to 7 is another common way to score it. There is no universal benchmark, so compare your own touchpoints against each other and track the trend quarter by quarter.

Ask one statement, for example the company made it easy for me to handle my issue, on a 1 to 7 scale. Then either average all answers or take the percentage who answered 5, 6 or 7. For 200 answers of which 130 are 5 to 7, the score is 65 percent.

CES measures how hard one specific interaction was. NPS measures overall loyalty and willingness to recommend. CES is best right after a support ticket, checkout or onboarding step. NPS is best on a regular rhythm across the whole relationship.

Not for the score itself. Any survey tool can send the one question. Dedicated software earns its price when it triggers the question after each interaction, ties it to the customer and explains the low scores, which means analyzing the open answers.