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Free CES Calculator: Calculate your Customer Effort Score

Customer Effort Score Calculator

Replace the example response counts to get your CES.

"Example Product makes it easy for me to [achieve goal]."

Extremely DifficultExtremely Easy
1.02.03.04.05.0

What is the Customer Effort Score (CES)?

The Customer Effort Score is a simple yet powerful metric that measures how much effort a user has to put in to accomplish a task. Instead of asking "Are you satisfied?", CES asks:

"[Product] made it easy for me to [achieve a goal]"

It's a good way to know how well your product actually performed to solve a problem.

Calculate customer loyalty using the CES calculator by FormBricks

In this article, we'll explore how to use an CES calculator and how does it exactly help you to get more insights on your Customer experience. Let's dive in!

Users then respond on a scale of 1 to 5. If you don't have a CES survey yet, you can use our CES survey template, we also provide you conditional logic to ask a follow up question depending on the answer.:

1 – Strongly Disagree

2 – Disagree

3 – Neutral

4 – Agree

5 – Strongly Agree

The average score becomes your CES. The higher the score, the easier your product is to use.

Formula to Calculate CES

You can use following formula to calculate Customer effort for your product or service:

Formula to calculate CES

Best Practices for Measuring Customer Effort

Focus on Task Completion

The key to effective CES measurement is focusing on specific, completed tasks rather than general experiences. Break down complex processes into individual tasks and measure the effort required for each. For example, instead of asking about the overall checkout process, measure the effort for specific steps like "adding items to cart" or "entering shipping information."

This granular approach helps you identify exactly where customers are experiencing friction, making it easier to prioritize improvements that will have the biggest impact on reducing effort.

Measure at the Right Moment

The accuracy of your CES data depends heavily on when you measure it. Measure effort immediately after task completion, when the experience is fresh in the customer's mind. This timing ensures you capture the true effort required, not the customer's memory of it.

For digital products, this might mean measuring after a user completes a specific action. For service interactions, measure right after the service is delivered. The key is to catch the customer when they've just experienced the effort, not when they've had time to forget or rationalize it.

Use the Right Scale

The standard 1-5 scale for CES works best when it's anchored with clear, effort-focused descriptions. Instead of generic "agree/disagree" options, use descriptions that specifically relate to effort:

  • 1: "Extremely difficult - required a lot of effort"
  • 2: "Difficult - required more effort than expected"
  • 3: "Moderate - required expected effort"
  • 4: "Easy - required little effort"
  • 5: "Extremely easy - required no effort"

This scale helps customers better assess and communicate the actual effort required to complete their task.

Effective CES Collection Methods

Task-Based Surveys

The most effective way to collect CES data is through task-specific surveys that appear immediately after a customer completes a key action. These surveys should be:

  • Contextual: Reference the specific task just completed
  • Brief: One question focused on effort
  • Non-intrusive: Appear naturally in the user flow
  • Actionable: Provide an option for additional feedback

For example, after a password reset, a simple survey might ask: "How easy was it to reset your password?" with the effort scale.

Journey Mapping

Journey Mapping

To get a comprehensive view of customer effort, map out the entire customer journey and measure CES at key touchpoints. This approach helps you:

  • Identify high-effort areas in the customer journey
  • Understand how effort accumulates across interactions
  • Prioritize improvements based on impact
  • Track effort reduction over time

Continuous Monitoring

Instead of one-time measurements, implement a system of continuous effort monitoring. This involves:

  • Regular measurement at key touchpoints
  • Automated alerts for high-effort scores
  • Trend analysis to identify patterns
  • Quick response to emerging issues

This approach helps you catch and address effort issues before they impact customer satisfaction or loyalty.

Combining Methods

The most effective CES strategy combines multiple collection methods:

  • In-app measurements for digital interactions
  • Post-interaction surveys for service touchpoints
  • Journey mapping for overall effort assessment
  • Continuous monitoring for ongoing improvement

Choose the combination that best fits your business type and customer journey, but always ensure you're measuring effort at the right moment with the right context.

Comparing and Benchmarking CES Scores

Industry Benchmarks

Understanding how your CES scores compare to industry standards is crucial for context. While the ideal CES score varies by industry, here are some general benchmarks:

Excellent (1.0-2.0): Your customers find interactions extremely effortless, indicating a highly optimized user experience. This is the gold standard for customer effort.

Good (2.1-3.0): Customers experience minimal friction, with most tasks requiring only expected effort. This range is considered strong performance in most industries.

Average (3.1-4.0): Interactions require moderate effort, suggesting room for improvement in streamlining processes. This is a warning sign that some customers may be experiencing unnecessary friction.

Needs Improvement (4.1-5.0): High effort scores indicate significant friction points that need immediate attention. This range suggests customers are struggling with your product or service.

Remember that lower scores are better in CES, as they indicate less effort required.

Internal Comparisons

Track your CES scores over time to measure improvement:

Month-over-month trends help you identify short-term changes in customer effort and quickly address emerging issues. This is particularly useful for tracking the impact of recent changes.

Quarter-over-quarter comparisons provide a broader view of effort trends and help validate the effectiveness of your improvement initiatives. This timeframe helps smooth out monthly fluctuations.

Year-over-year analysis reveals long-term patterns and the cumulative impact of your effort-reduction strategies. This is crucial for strategic planning and resource allocation.

Pre/post improvement measurements directly link your changes to customer effort reduction. This helps justify investments in user experience improvements.

Leveraging AI for CES Automation

Smart Survey Triggers

AI can help you automate the timing of CES surveys by:

Task completion detection ensures surveys appear exactly when customers finish their intended action. This eliminates guesswork about when to ask for feedback.

Optimal timing identification uses behavioral patterns to determine the best moment to request feedback. This increases response rates and accuracy.

Personalized survey delivery tailors questions based on the specific interaction and customer history. This makes feedback requests feel more relevant and natural.

Survey fatigue management intelligently spaces out feedback requests to maintain high-quality responses. This prevents overwhelming customers with too many surveys.

Intelligent Analysis

Use AI to analyze CES data more effectively:

Pattern recognition automatically identifies common pain points across customer interactions. This helps prioritize improvements that will have the biggest impact.

Sentiment analysis extracts insights from open-ended feedback to understand the emotional context of effort scores. This provides deeper understanding of customer frustration points.

Predictive analytics forecasts effort trends and helps anticipate potential issues before they impact customers. This enables proactive improvement planning.

Automated insights generate actionable recommendations based on CES data patterns. This speeds up the decision-making process for improvements.

Real-time Monitoring

Implement AI-powered monitoring to:

Live score tracking provides immediate visibility into customer effort levels across all touchpoints. This enables quick response to emerging issues.

Automated alerts notify teams when effort scores exceed acceptable thresholds. This ensures rapid response to customer pain points.

Instant reporting generates comprehensive dashboards showing effort trends and patterns. This helps teams make data-driven decisions about improvements.

Smart recommendations suggest specific actions to reduce customer effort based on real-time data. This accelerates the improvement process.

How Our CES Calculator Helps

Our tool makes it effortless to:

✅ Input response counts across all 5 rating levels

✅ Instantly see the calculated CES

✅ Get a clear interpretation of the score (e.g., "Generally Easy", "Extremely Difficult")

✅ Visualize the score on a color-coded ease meter

Who Should Use It?

This CES Calculator is perfect for generally anyone who really cares about the customer experience and product:

  • Product Teams – to track changes in usability over time

  • UX Designers – to validate design decisions with real feedback

  • Customer Success Managers – to identify friction points in user journeys

  • Founders and Growth Teams – to prioritize fixes and features that reduce user effort

It's fast, clean, and built with UX in mind — just like the experience you want to create for your users.

How to Use It in Practice

It's a simple 4 step process:

  1. Collect feedback after key interactions — signups, onboarding, checkout, etc.

  2. Enter the number of responses for each score into the calculator.

  3. Review the average score and interpretation.

  4. Take action, if your score is below 3, identify and remove friction points.

Why CES Over Other Metrics?

While NPS and CSAT measure satisfaction and loyalty, CES is focused on effort, often a more reliable predictor of churn. Studies show that reducing effort is more effective at building loyalty than delighting users.

But other metrics are equally important too. That's why we have calculators, tools, templates and articles for all of them. Check out our NPS calculator,

Try the CES Calculator

Plug in your feedback and get instant insights. It's a simple tool, but it can drive massive improvements in product experience and retention.

Less effort = more loyalty. Start measuring what really matters today.

If you want more than just CES calculator feel free to check out our Customer Survey Templates library

Customer Effort score template (CES Template)

Frequently Asked Questions

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