Do you know how happy your customers are with your business? Have you ever asked them?
While you may find out on occasion by asking them in person, the easiest and most effective way to learn about customer satisfaction is to survey your customers.
A great tool is the Customer Effort Score (CES) survey. In this article, we look at what you can learn from your CES score.
But, first, just what it is it? Your CES score is a customer service metric that measure the overall user experience when it comes to either your products or your services.
The CES score ranks your customers’ experience on a seven-point scale ranging from “very difficult” to “very easy.” It ultimately tells you how much effort your customers had to expend to use your product or service, and if they are willing to pay for it again.
Now let’s look at what you can learn.
When You Should Use the CES Survey
Your goal as a business owner is to do everything in your power to increase your customer service. This is what grows a business.
One tool in your arsenal is the CES score. Here’s when to use it:
- Use the CES survey immediately after your customer interacts with a product, and it leads to a purchase or subscription.
- You can use the CES survey immediately after your customer interacts with your customer service staff.
- Use the CES to measure the overall experience a customer has with your brand or product in general.
Let’s break each of those instances down.
Use It Immediately After a Customer Interaction with a Product
This is the most common use of the CES survey. It’s especially useful to know what your customer thinks of your product or service right after they’ve purchased or used it. You can use it after they’ve visited your website, bought something, or downloaded something.
Consider this real time feedback that you can put to use to keep your business growing and scaling.
The CES survey isn’t about finding out overall satisfaction. It’s about learning how they feel about something specific. You can use this survey multiple times to learn more about each customer interaction.
The CES score is measured by asking customers, “On a scale of one to seven, how easy was it to…?” The answers are as follows:
- Extremely Difficult
- Very Difficult
- Fairly difficult
- Neither
- Fairly easy
- Very easy
- Extremely easy
You can see that your goal is to have a higher score with the CES. If you get scores from 1-4, you know you’ve got some work to do.
Use It Immediately After an Interaction with Customer Service
Knowing how your customers feel about an interaction with your customer service department can enlighten you and let you know if your customer is going to purchase from you again.
This is a sticky touch point, and you want to make sure you get a low score with this item. The CES can help you learn if you need to provide better customer service training or even let some staff go.
You can use this after any customer interaction, whether it’s a phone call, email response, online chat, or other interaction.
It’s important that your customers feel like they didn’t have to put much effort at all into resolving their issues. To learn about their experience, survey them after a contact touch point but only after you’ve solved their issues.
Use It to Measure Overall Customer Experience
The CES survey can also measure your customers’ aggregate experience with your brand.
This isn’t the most popular way to use the survey, but it can be helpful for longer term customers.
Your customer will have multiple touchpoints with your business and using the CES survey to measure the aggregate experience can help you uncover additional and even more detailed information.
Using the CES Score to Improve Your Business
Using your CES score to improve your business is easy once you learn what your customers think. Here are a few things you can do once you have your scores:
- You can improve your customer service department by knowing where your team falls down, and where they excel. You’ll also learn at what point in the customer journey, there is a bottleneck. For example, does your login page hang up often? Or do your customer service reps take too long to answer your customers?
- You can train your team how to handle angry customers. Your overall customer service training should guide your team in how to handle the unpredictable customer who “loses it.” This in turn helps improve the customer’s interaction with your business.
- Make it easier for your customers to find what they need without your intervention. Provide a chat bot on your website. Make sure you are fully staffed in your customer service department. Post how-to videos on your website.
- Reduce the effort of your employees. You know that happy team members make even happier customers. So, you can really improve your overall customer experience if you delegate to your team and give them the ability to handle issues as they arise. (tweet this) This goes a long way to improving your overall customer experience.
Final Thoughts
Your Customer Effort Score focuses on the process your customers have to go through when they need help or are trying to use your product or service.
Different than your Net Promoter Score, the CES shows you how your customers’ overall experience with your business transpired. It is a major driver of customer loyalty or conversely, customer disloyalty.
When you are able to reduce the customers’ effort, and the energy your customers have to spend to use your products and service, you go a long way towards improving your overall customer service. Ultimately this builds loyalty and brand ambassadors.
The easier it is to navigate your business, the less effort your customers expend. The less effort they expend, the more satisfied they’ll be, and the more loyal you’ll find them.
Increase your CES score to increase overall customer retention by following the tips in this article, and watch your business improve
Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.
Image: You X Ventures on Unsplash