The Significance of Customer Effort Scores

How easily can my issues be handled? This is one of the questions customers ask when getting involved with a new company. About 99.9% of customers expect a response of “effortlessly”. Customer Effort Scores provide insights to potential customers.

In this fast-paced, digital age we live in, ratings and recommendations influence the next potential customer. Without doubt, people want to hear if a business is useful or not before dipping their toes in for themselves. 5 stars here, “satisfied” scores there. Businesses demonstrate their strengths and weaknesses through the use of customer effort scores on their website, for potential customers and competitors to see.

How easy is it for a customer to connect to a support agent and resolve a problem? How easy is it to answer a question? These are questions each business should ask themselves. In the customer support area, that can be a significant indicator of whether your customers are likely to return to you.

Businesses are continually hoping to keep their customers impressed by, and loyal to, their services. Consequently, customer satisfaction is essential. To know how their customers are feeling with their services, they look at a simple little survey labeled ‘CES.’

What Is a Customer Effort Score?

Customer Effort Scores (CES) are a critical customer service metric. Basically, CES enables service organizations to account for the ease of customer interaction and resolution during a request. A symbolic key performance indicator (KPI) of customer satisfaction, the CES is easy to measure. In brief, the score assigns ratings along a spectrum from a minimal effort to incredibly difficult.

To put it in layman’s terms, the CES shows the business if they’ve made their services usable for their customers. It indicates if the customers were happy with their interactions.

A popular methodology employed by customer success teams everywhere, CES surveys rose to global attention in 2010. Harvard Business Review’s article “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” captured the attention of business leaders. Customer experience surveys are triggered after specific interactions and processes occur between a business and customers.

An All-Powerful Tool … and Weapon

Actionable, specific, and a strong predictor of future purchase behaviors, CES surveys help gauge how likely your customers are to refer your brand to others.

If not proactively considering customer effort, your company could go from enjoying great customer feedback to ending up the subject of brand-bashing expressions of frustration in consumer circles. A customer’s poor rating tends to shout louder, and spread further, than an excellent one.

According to Statistica, 62 percent of customers have stopped doing business with a brand due to a poor customer service experience. Undoubtedly, lost customers are lost revenue that companies can’t afford to lose.

Also worth bearing in mind is that 96% of unhappy customers will not complain to the business but will tell over 15 of their friends about their bad experience.

Excellent customer experience starts before an issue arises but is vital once there is a problem to handle. Due to the continued growth of eCommerce, global reach, and changes in consumer behaviors, businesses rely on voice and data networks for customer communication. Certainly, the voice channel, or phone call, continues to dominate as a customer interface.

Keep your customers satisfied and keep your scores high.