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A CES tool (Customer Effort Score) is the template your company configures to measure effort: how easy it was for a customer to accomplish what they came to do. It is the right metric for interactions where reducing friction matters more than delighting: support, after-sales, onboarding, returns, or transactions. It is the twin of CSAT: it shares the scale, the mandatory score logic and optional comment, and the same metrics. What changes is the question and what it measures. A single company can have several CES tools at the same time. For example:
  • CES for support service.
  • CES for the return process.
  • CES for onboarding.

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Action to evaluate

The CES question is fixed: “On a scale of 1 to 5, how easy was it to ?”. The only thing you define is the action: what the customer was trying to accomplish. Examples of actions:
  • “resolve your issue”
  • “complete your purchase”
  • “make your return”
Keep the action short and specific. The question is translated automatically between Spanish and English, or you can write the versions in each language yourself.

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Name

The name is the internal identifier of the tool. Only your team sees it, your customers will not see it. Use it to distinguish your CES tools when you have several, for example “Support CES” or “Returns CES”.
A CES tool that already has responses cannot be edited. This way all responses always correspond to the same question.

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1 to 5 scale

The scale is fixed and is not configurable. The customer picks a whole value from 1 to 5, where 1 is very difficult and 5 is very easy. The score is mandatory.

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Optional comment

After choosing their score, the customer can leave a comment in text or in audio, and decide whether they identify with their email or respond anonymously. If they respond anonymously, no email is requested.

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Sharing

As with the other tools, you have three ways:
  • QR code: to print, stick on a kiosk, or show on screen.
  • Link: to send by chat, WhatsApp, or inside a transactional email.
  • Bulk email send: paste a list from Excel or Google Sheets.

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Reports

The CES main page shows the company combined CES, which brings together the responses from all your tools: percentage of Easy experiences, distribution of Overall ease (Easy, Neutral, and Difficult), average out of 5, and percentage of responses with a comment. Below, the custom CES table lists each tool with its responses, ease, average, and last response. When you open a tool you see its detail:
  • Easy experiences: percentage of responses with a score of 4 or 5.
  • Average ease, total responses, and comment rate.
  • Detail by rating: histogram of responses from 1 to 5.
  • Overall ease: distribution across Easy, Neutral, and Difficult.
  • Comments: each comment classified as Recognition or Improvement, with an AI Summary that is generated automatically.
To measure satisfaction instead of effort, see CSAT.