CES
The CES report monitors a quiet driver of churn that satisfaction and loyalty alone can miss: effort. It answers a deceptively simple question — "How easy was it?" — and surfaces the journeys that feel like hard work, from returns and store pickup to delivery and the call center. If a touchpoint scores well on satisfaction but customers keep slipping away, effort is often the hidden culprit. Open this report when you want to find friction and fix it before it bites.
Customer Effort Score is measured on a 1–7 scale, with responses grouped into three segments:
- Easy — the experience felt effortless.
- Neutral — neither smooth nor painful.
- Not Easy — the customer had to work for it.
CES complements CSAT and NPS rather than replacing them: it tells you where an experience is hard, which is often the root cause behind a soft satisfaction score or a stalled loyalty trend.
CES needs the effort question
CES is only meaningful where the effort question is actually asked. If a touchpoint doesn't include it, that survey won't appear in this report — expect a narrower set of questionnaires here than in CSAT or NPS.
What you'll see
A typical CES report includes:
- A headline gauge — your overall CES on the 1–7 scale, with a year-over-year delta and total responses.
- Three segment donuts — the share of Easy, Neutral and Not Easy responses at a glance.
- A Timeline combo chart — monthly stacked bars showing the segment mix as a percentage, with your CES trend line overlaid.
- A by-Questionnaire table — each survey's CES with an in-cell bar, plus both a score delta and a response-volume delta versus the prior period. Sortable, with a grand total.
- A Timeline by Questionnaire chart — a grouped bar view of each survey's CES month by month, so you can compare journeys side by side over time.
Filter by date range, workspace and questionnaire to focus on the specific journey you're investigating.
Put it to work
- Find the hard journeys. Sort the by-Questionnaire table to surface where effort is highest — returns and call center are common offenders.
- Connect effort to outcomes. Cross-reference a high-effort touchpoint with its CSAT and NPS to confirm friction is what's hurting you.
- Measure your fixes. After you simplify a process, watch the Timeline's Not Easy slice shrink to confirm the change worked.
- Compare journeys over time. Use the by-Questionnaire timeline to see whether delivery, pickup and returns are improving or diverging.
Watch the deltas, not just the score
A rising Not Easy segment is worth acting on even before the average score moves. Read the score delta and the volume delta together so you tackle the high-traffic journeys where friction costs you the most customers.