Feature
The Gist
- Streamline interactions. Streamlining and simplifying interactions reduces the effort required by customers, thus improving the customer effort score.
- Offer accessibility. Prioritizing accessibility across all channels can significantly enhance a brand's customer effort score, attracting and retaining more customers.
- Respond rapidly. Fast and efficient responses to customer service inquiries contribute greatly to improving the customer effort score.
The customer effort score (CES) is a metric that is used to measure how easy it is to do business with a brand. The metric involves asking customers to rate their experience with a brand on a scale from "very easy" to "very difficult." Today's customers expect and appreciate an effortless experience across all of a brand's channels and are more likely to be loyal to businesses that provide such an experience. This article will look at the ways that brands are improving their CES, how it impacts the customer experience, and how it enhances long-term customer loyalty.
Fernando Lopez, marketing director of the route planning SaaS Circuit, told CMSWire that now more than ever, the CES can make or break a brand’s retention rates. "CES measures the amount of effort a customer must give to do business with you — with shortened attention spans and highly-competitive markets, you need to prioritize accessibility if you hope to keep people interested," said Lopez.
What Is CES, and When Did It Come Into Use?
In the past decade, CES has become one of the most highly regarded metrics in Voice of Customer (VoC) initiatives. Reilly Nolan, technical brand writer at Cisco, an enterprise video conferencing solution provider, told CMSWire that researchers from the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), now a part of Gartner, first introduced the concept of the customer effort score in 2010. According to the CEB study, reducing effort is far more effective at increasing customer loyalty than trying to wow consumers with over-the-top service. “All customers really want is a simple, quick solution to their problem.”
Nolan expressed the reasoning behind the CES perfectly: “The more effort required to reach a certain outcome (such as making a purchase or resolving an issue), the more frustrating the customer experience. By contrast, a low-effort interaction makes for a better, smoother experience that casts your brand in a positive light,” said Nolan, who added that many times, customer service does the exact opposite. “Whether it be because of long wait times, having to repeat oneself, or jumping through hoops, customers are four times more likely to leave a service interaction disloyal than loyal,” Nolan said. “That’s where CES comes into play. Tracking CES allows you to identify pain points in the customer experience, isolate troublesome channels, and make immediate and long-term improvements.”
Related Article: Customer Effort Score (CES): What It Is & Ways to Measure It
Common Causes of Friction in the Customer Journey
Unfortunately, everyone is aware of CES (without actually knowing the term) because of the experiences they have had as a consumer. While most consumers have probably had many excellent experiences, there were likely many other experiences that were extraordinarily unpleasant.
Many people have had the experience of getting to the register with all their goods in a shopping cart after waiting in a long line. An associate picks up an item to be scanned, only to find that there is no price tag on the item. After flagging down another associate, the customer has to wait while they go back into the store to locate the items and scan a price tag.
Inconsistencies across channels are often another driver of friction. Consider the customer who is at home doing some holiday shopping on their PC. They save several items in the website’s shopping cart, and then make the drive to the brick-and-mortar store so they can physically handle the items before purchasing them. Unfortunately, when they get to the store, they discover that the desktop version of the website is totally different from the mobile app — and that there are no items saved in the mobile app’s shopping cart. Now they’re going to have to relocate the items in the app, which takes time, effort and patience.
One of the most common examples of friction is that of the consumer who is trying to reach customer service for some issue with a product or service. They finally locate the customer service phone number on the brand’s website and call the number. An interactive voice response (IVR) bot answers the call, directing them through language suggestions, going through all the options and then placing them on hold to wait for a human agent. Then the customer tells the agent what the problem is. The agent apologizes and puts them on hold again, and in 10 minutes another agent answers the phone. Now the customer has to explain the whole issue over again before the agent is finally able to resolve the problem. The customer ended up feeling frustrated, irritated and annoyed at the experience and wondered if there are any companies out there that actually care about their customers.
Thankfully, there are plenty of businesses that care about their customers. "Scores of other companies are doing their best to get their products into their customers’ hands, so you must always maintain a high ease of access rating to prevent customers from seeking more accessible alternatives," said Lopez.
Because all of us have been on the receiving end of a poor customer experience, it’s easier to empathize with the customer, to understand and feel their pain when they have to make a supreme effort just to get a business to take their money. This simplifies the process of reviewing a website, app, storefront, application, product or service for potential pain points along the customer journey.
“Establishing low-effort customer experiences helps simplify the buyer’s journey,” said Nolan. “By offering new, existing, and prospective customers a path of least resistance for issue resolution, business leaders can significantly minimize effort, foster loyalty, and deliver more positive interactions.”
Related Article: Skewed Metrics: How CX Leaders Should Rethink NPS, CSAT and CES
KISS Your CES: Keep It Simple, Stupid
The KISS principle is all about simplicity. Look at the interactions that a customer has with a brand from the customer's perspective. Are there unnecessary steps that should be eliminated? Reducing the number of steps in a process, clarifying instructions and avoiding jargon can make it much easier for customers to interact with a brand.
Are there any areas that could be simplified? What about the checkout process? A simplified checkout process can greatly reduce the effort a customer has to exert to make a purchase. Other areas to consider include:
- User-Friendly Design: For an effective website or mobile app design, prioritize a user-friendly interface that is simple and intuitive to use. The user experience can also be improved through the use of clear calls to action.
- Clear Communications: Brands should strive to communicate clearly and concisely, speaking in the voice of the customer and avoiding unnecessary complexity. This includes product descriptions, customer service communications, marketing materials and any other information that is directed at the customer.
- Automate Simply: While automation can simplify customer interactions, it must be implemented thoughtfully. Overly complex automation can lead to confusion and increased customer effort. Keep automated responses and processes simple and intuitive. This is especially applicable to IVR systems.
- Easy-to-Find Information: Make information about products or services, including FAQs and troubleshooting guides, easy to find and understand. Customers shouldn't have to exert a lot of effort to find the information they need. This is especially applicable to customer service emails, phone numbers and chatbots.
- Simplify Customer Service: When a customer has a problem, they want it solved quickly and easily. A simple, more basic approach to customer service can reduce the effort required to resolve issues. This could mean quicker response times, easy-to-use self-service options or a straightforward process for contacting a customer service representative.
CES Pitfalls to Avoid
Ironically, businesses often end up overcomplicating their websites or apps in the process of trying to improve CES. They may believe that putting additional information on their home page will make it easier for customers to locate specific products or services, but unfortunately, instead of being easier to locate, the customer ends up with information overload. Adding prominent search options to the top right of each page, as well as menu items that link to the main sections of the site, enables customers to help themselves. Likewise, a customer shouldn’t have to scroll to the very bottom of a long page in order to locate a link to the customer service page.
Brands often have audience segments from drastically different groups of people. They may be younger, older, from a different country or region, have different educational backgrounds, or be in different income brackets. The bottom line is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so brands should not assume that any one thing they do will solve a problem for all of their customers.
Many consumers are now used to the exceptional customer service that Amazon provides, where a customer can request a call from a service agent and receive the call immediately. Although this type of customer service is next to impossible for many businesses to provide, they must still keep in mind that speed equates to efficiency and a frictionless interaction with a brand, and waiting turns to frustration and friction. Customers today expect a business to respond to them as soon as possible. Slow response time, or worse, no response at all, can drastically increase the perceived customer effort. A 2023 Statista survey indicated that 70% of customers expect a same-day response to customer service inquiries, while 46% were prepared to wait two days.
Finally, one of the most important things a brand should keep in mind is that it's vital to pay attention to any negative feedback from customers. It may be difficult to read through negative reviews, but these types of customer responses provide brands with the largest opportunities to eradicate the pain points in the customer journey. Ignoring these golden opportunities can also lead to customers feeling that they are ignored, or that brands do not value their thoughts or concerns.
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Final Thoughts on the Customer Effort Score
The customer effort score is a core metric for measuring customer experience and loyalty. The key to improving CES is to create low-effort interactions by eliminating the pain points in the customer journey. This may involve simplifying websites and apps, refining marketing and descriptive text, ensuring that information is easily accessible, and prioritizing customer service. Improving CES is about understanding and empathizing with customers at each touchpoint to create long-term loyalty through ease of use and convenience.
