Free CES Calculator

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy it was for a customer to accomplish a specific task with your product or service. It's typically measured on a 1-7 scale where 1 = 'Very Difficult' and 7 = 'Very Easy.' The question format is: '[Company] made it easy for me to [task].' CES is the best predictor of future purchasing behavior — customers who experience low effort are 94% more likely to repurchase.

CES = sum of all responses ÷ number of responses. If 10 users rated their experience and their scores were 5, 6, 7, 4, 5, 6, 7, 5, 6, 5, your CES = 56 ÷ 10 = 5.6. Some teams also calculate the percentage of 'easy' responses (scores 5-7) vs. 'difficult' responses (scores 1-3).

CES: after specific interactions (support ticket, onboarding, feature usage) — measures effort. NPS: quarterly or semi-annually — measures loyalty and advocacy. CSAT: after any interaction — measures satisfaction at a moment. Use CES when you want to reduce friction in specific workflows. Use NPS for overall relationship health. Use CSAT for point-in-time satisfaction checks.

For SaaS: 5.0+ is good, 5.5+ is great, 6.0+ is excellent. For e-commerce: 4.8+ is good, 5.2+ is great. Industry context matters — compare against your specific benchmark. More important than the absolute number is the trend: is your CES improving over time?

CES tells you how hard something is. Feature requests tell you what to fix. They're complementary: a low CES score on your export flow + feature requests for 'easier CSV export' + 30 votes on that request = clear signal to invest in export improvements. Use CES to identify problem areas, then a voting board to prioritize solutions.