Reducing Customer Effort Is Your Best Investment

BY QDegreesPUBLISHED
Feb. 09, 2023

There has always been a healthy debate on what fits in as the right measure for customer experience. The most coveted method to pursue CX can improve customer satisfaction and retention dramatically, however, what you do next is far more important than how you measure. We often find it complicated to choose the right metric in our quest of delivering a great customer experience however it is the effort that influences the sentiments of a modern-day customer as every interaction counts. Customer Experience has much more to do than customer satisfaction, but whether it is loyalty or the effortless service that drives customers crazy behind a brand is something that we shall explore in this write-up.

CES or NPS? - The big Question!

While NPS is one of the most popular and familiar methodologies, measuring loyalty however does not touch the service quality directly.

It has “likelihood to recommend” as a key objective which is tougher than “satisfied”, yet doesn’t tell you what’s important to your customers.

CES - Customer Effort Score on the other side talks about making each interaction effortless for the customer. It measures the service quality in each journey and from the customer’s perspective. It has the sole objective of making tasks easier for the customers and tells you exactly what you need to do. CES focuses more on processes than people and drives technology, design, and effortless journeys, to enhance each experience customer, goes through. CES aims to discover new-age methods to consistently exceed customer expectations concerning the speed of the transaction along with quality.

CES – How Significant is it?

Reduction in customer friction is a better predictor of customer loyalty than one exceptional experience at a single touch-point. The level of effort the customer has to expend proves to be the key factor determining a customer’s likelihood of shopping or recommending a business in the future. CES is a customer experience metric that measures the ease of interaction instead of the satisfaction rate, and hence low effort drives satisfaction in itself leading to brand loyalty. An organization that is experiencing poor customer satisfaction can use the Customer Effort Score to evaluate problem areas in the journey. The idea is that customers are more loyal to a product or service that is easier to use.

Customer Effort Score - So How Does it work?

The CES metric is gaining traction as many businesses seek to understand their customers better. It is a type of customer satisfaction survey that is used to measure the ease of service experience with an organization. It asks customers to rate the ease of using products or services on a scale of “very difficult” to “very easy. We can refer to the below CES Question to see how you can use this metric to help determine customer satisfaction.

This question uses a 5-Point scale to determine the ease of doing business. This scale uses extreme positive, positive, neutral, negative, and extreme negative answer options to gather data from customers. Customers choose a positive, neutral, or negative effort reaction in line with their efforts.

The Formula? The Customer Effort Score calculation requires you to determine the percentage of positive (very easy and easy) and negative (very difficult and difficult) responses to your CES survey. You can then subtract the number of negative responses from the positive responses.

What are the advantages of CES?

• It focuses on effort reduction, which is the nerve for any customer seeking a solution.

• It’s better at predicting brand loyalty and repurchases and is less volatile than other metrics.

• It is simplified, yet effective in measuring service quality and speed with which transaction gets performed.

• This scoring model applies to all client-facing processes, which makes it extremely easy to take corrective actions throughout the organization.

THE CONCLUSION

One of the great things about CES surveys is that they are actionable and specific – they can quickly show which areas need improvement to streamline the customer experience. While CES surveys are a great source of customer insight, it’s better when you pair them with an advocacy-oriented survey – like Net Promoter Score. Using CES alongside NPS will let you accurately measure both customer effort and loyalty. The two metrics effectively complement each other and let you focus on two vital aspects of your business instead of just one i.e; effort and advocacy.