CES measures how hard customers had to work to get what they needed, and low effort predicts loyalty better than delight. Here is how it works.
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much effort a customer had to expend to get an issue resolved or a task done, usually on a 1 to 7 agreement scale. Lower effort predicts higher loyalty.
CES asks customers to rate a statement like 'the company made it easy to handle my issue,' typically from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). You report the average score or the percentage who agree. The research behind CES found that reducing effort is a stronger driver of loyalty than trying to delight customers, which is why support and product teams track it alongside CSAT and NPS.
After resolving 100 tickets, the average response to 'it was easy to get this resolved' is 5.8 out of 7. That is a strong CES. If it were 3.5, you would have an effort problem driving customers toward the exit.
Effort is friction, and friction is what makes customers leave even when they like your product. A high-effort experience (repeating yourself, bouncing between channels, slow resolution) erodes loyalty quietly. Because CES is tied to a specific interaction, it points directly at what to fix. AI-assisted support is increasingly used to lower effort by resolving issues faster.