What is CES (Customer Effort Score)?Customer Effort Score (CES) is a customer experience metric measuring how much effort a customer had to expend to accomplish a specific task or resolve a specific issue with your product or company. Originally developed by CEB (now Gartner), it is typically measured with a single question: How easy
What is CES (Customer Effort Score)?
Customer Effort Score (CES) is a customer experience metric measuring how much effort a customer had to expend to accomplish a specific task or resolve a specific issue with your product or company. Originally developed by CEB (now Gartner), it is typically measured with a single question: How easy was it to [complete the task]? on a 7-point scale from Very Difficult (1) to Very Easy (7). CES research shows that reducing customer effort is a stronger predictor of loyalty and retention than delighting customers: customers who experience high effort when interacting with a company are significantly more likely to churn, share negative experiences, and reduce purchases.
CES Applications in SaaS
Highest-value CES measurement touchpoints for SaaS companies: support ticket resolution (how easy was it to get your issue resolved?), onboarding completion (how easy was it to set up and get started with the product?), integration configuration (how easy was it to connect the product to your existing tools?), billing and account management (how easy was it to manage your subscription?), and in-product feature discovery (how easy was it to find and use this feature?). High CES scores in these areas indicate low friction, which correlates with higher retention, positive reviews, and word-of-mouth recommendation.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I use CES versus CSAT versus NPS?
Use CES when: you want to identify process friction (high effort areas indicate where simplification would improve retention), evaluating support effectiveness (effort is a better predictor of customer loyalty than satisfaction from support interactions), and assessing onboarding and product usability. Use CSAT when: measuring satisfaction with a specific recent interaction or event (product launch, support ticket, feature release). Use NPS when: measuring overall brand loyalty, advocacy propensity, and relationship health at the account level on a periodic basis. Many mature SaaS CS programs use all three: NPS for strategic health monitoring, CSAT for interaction quality, and CES for process improvement targeting.
What is a good CES score for SaaS?
CES benchmarks vary by scale used and industry, but on a 7-point scale, scores above 5.5 indicate low-effort experiences. Below 4.5 indicates high-effort experiences that create churn risk. More actionable than absolute benchmarks: identify your lowest CES touchpoints (highest customer effort areas) and target systematic process or product improvements to raise those scores. Support resolution effort and onboarding ease are typically the most impactful CES improvement areas for SaaS customer retention, as these touchpoints occur early in the customer lifecycle when loyalty is still forming.