How CES works
After an interaction, the customer rates a statement such as "The company made it easy for me to handle my issue." A common scale runs from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
How to calculate CES
Teams use one of two methods:
- Average: add all the scores and divide by the number of responses.
- Percentage: the share of responses in the top part of the scale, such as 5, 6, or 7 on a 7-point scale.
Choose one method and keep it, so that results stay comparable.
Why it matters
Customers remember effort: repeated contacts, transfers, and forms they had to fill in again. CES points to the steps in a process that make customers work too hard.
The metric was introduced by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) in a 2010 Harvard Business Review article, "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers".
CES in FormFlux
Add a radio button question with labeled options from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree", then a follow-up question for comments. Use conditional logic to ask low scorers what went wrong.