A customer effort score benchmark helps you understand how easy or difficult it is for customers to complete an action with your company. That action could be resolving a support issue, making a purchase, finding information, using a product feature, or completing onboarding.
Customer Effort Score, often called CES, matters because customers usually remember friction. If a task takes too many steps, repeats information, or forces them to contact support more than once, the experience feels heavy.
For US businesses, CES is especially useful across support, SaaS onboarding, ecommerce checkout, healthcare scheduling, banking services, telecom support, and any process where customers want a quick and simple outcome.
What is Customer Effort Score?
Customer Effort Score is a customer experience metric that measures how much effort a customer needs to complete a task or interaction with a business.
A common CES survey question is:
“How easy was it to resolve your issue today?”
Another version asks:
To what extent do you agree with this statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue?
The question usually uses a numbered scale, such as 1 to 5 or 1 to 7. The scoring direction depends on the wording. If the question asks how easy something was, a higher score usually means better performance. If the question asks how much effort was required, a lower score is usually better.
CES is often used after service interactions, support tickets, checkout, onboarding, product setup, account changes, renewals, or self-service experiences.
What is a customer effort score benchmark?
A customer effort score benchmark is a comparison point that helps you understand whether your CES score is good, poor, improving, or declining.
A benchmark can come from:
- Your own past CES scores
- Competitor comparisons
- Industry averages
- Regional or global standards
- Specific customer journey stages
- Internal CX goals
A benchmark is useful only when the comparison is fair. A CES score from a support interaction should not be compared directly with a CES score from product onboarding unless the context is clear. Different journeys create different levels of effort.
The best benchmark is often internal: compare the same touchpoint over time, using the same question, same scale, and similar customer segments.
How do you calculate Customer Effort Score?
Customer effort score calculation usually means averaging responses to a CES question.
For example, if five customers answer a 1 to 7 ease question with scores of 6, 5, 7, 4, and 6, the calculation is:
CES = Total score from all responses / Number of responses
CES = 28 / 5 = 5.6
In this example, if the question measures ease, 5.6 out of 7 suggests customers found the experience fairly easy.
Some teams calculate CES as a percentage of customers who gave a positive score. For example, on a 1 to 7 scale, they may count 5, 6, and 7 as positive responses.
Before benchmarking, decide:
- Which question you will use
- Which scale you will use
- Whether higher or lower is better
- Which touchpoint you are measuring
- Which customer segment is included
Without those rules, CES benchmarks become confusing fast.
How should you benchmark Customer Effort Score?
A customer effort score benchmark works best when you compare CES from more than one angle. Competitor benchmarks show where you stand in the market, broader standards give context, and internal benchmarks show whether your own customer experience is improving.
1. Compare CES against competitors
Competitive benchmarking compares your Customer Effort Score with companies in the same market or industry. This helps you understand whether your experience feels easier or harder than the alternatives customers can choose from.
This works best when the comparison is specific. For example:
- An airline can compare customer effort around booking, check-in, baggage support, and disruption handling.
- A bank can compare customer effort around account setup, loan applications, mobile app use, and support resolution.
- A SaaS company can compare customer effort around onboarding, setup, support, and renewal.
Competitive CES benchmarks can be useful, but they are hard to collect cleanly. Customers may judge your brand differently from a competitor because of:
- Price
- Product complexity
- Support expectations
- Previous experience
- Channel quality
2. Compare CES against industry or global standards
Industry or global benchmarks can help you understand how your CES compares with broader expectations. But they should not be treated as universal truth.
Customer effort can vary by:
- Region
- Culture
- Product type
- Service channel
- Customer expectation
- Journey stage
For example, survey response patterns in the USA may differ from Europe or Asia because people use rating scales differently. Some respondents avoid extreme ratings, while others use very high or very low scores more often.
Use global standards as context, not as the only target. The best comparison is still the one that reflects your customer base and your specific journey.
3. Compare CES against your own past scores
Internal benchmarking is often the most useful method. Compare your CES over time, such as:
- Month over month
- Quarter over quarter
- Before and after a process change
- Before and after a support improvement
- Across similar customer segments
This shows whether the customer experience is actually becoming easier. For example, if customers report less effort after you simplify onboarding or improve support response times, that is a useful signal.
Internal benchmarks are also easier to control because you can use the same:
- Question
- Scale
- Channel
- Timing
- Customer segment
- Touchpoint
How is CES different from NPS and CSAT?
NPS, CSAT, and CES measure different parts of the customer experience. CES should not fully replace the other two metrics.
| Metric | What it measures | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| CES | Ease of completing an action | Support, onboarding, checkout, self-service |
| CSAT | Satisfaction with a specific experience | Post-support, post-purchase, service quality |
| NPS | Likelihood to recommend | Loyalty and relationship tracking |
CES is especially helpful when the business wants to reduce friction. NPS is better for tracking long-term loyalty. CSAT is useful when you want to know whether customers were satisfied with a specific interaction.
Learn more about: NPS vs CSAT vs CES
What affects your customer effort score benchmark?
Customer effort score benchmarks are affected by the number of steps, response speed, channel quality, product usability, and how much repeated work customers must do.
Common factors include:
- Long wait times
- Repeating information to multiple agents
- Confusing instructions
- Poor self-service content
- Hard-to-find contact options
- Slow website or app performance
- Complicated checkout or onboarding
- Unclear policies
- Weak handoff between teams
- Unresolved first contact issues
- Too many forms, fields, or approvals
A good CES benchmark should be tied to a specific touchpoint. “Overall customer effort” is useful, but touchpoint-level CES is more actionable.
How can you improve your Customer Effort Score?
You improve Customer Effort Score by removing friction from the moments where customers struggle most. Start with the touchpoints where CES is poor, and customer comments repeat the same pain points.
Practical ways to improve CES include:
- Reduce unnecessary steps.
- Improve help center and self-service content.
- Make support easier to reach.
- Use clearer language in forms, emails, and instructions.
- Reduce handoffs between teams.
- Train agents to solve issues without repeat contact.
- Simplify checkout, onboarding, and account changes.
- Track CES by touchpoint, not only at the company level.
- Review open-ended comments after low CES scores.
- Close the loop with customers when effort is high.
The goal is not to make every experience feel exciting. The goal is to make important tasks easier to complete.
How can QuestionPro Customer Experience help track Customer Effort Score?
QuestionPro Customer Experience can help you measure Customer Effort Score across key customer touchpoints, such as support interactions, onboarding, purchases, renewals, and self-service journeys.
With QuestionPro Customer Experience, you can:
- Create CES surveys.
- Send surveys after key interactions.
- Track CES by customer segment or touchpoint.
- Compare CES over time.
- Analyze open-ended feedback.
- Identify high-effort journeys.
- Build dashboards for CX teams.
- Connect CES with NPS, CSAT, and other customer experience metrics.
You can also use text to track Customer Effort Score, analyze customer feedback, and identify high-effort touchpoints across the customer journey.
Conclusion
A customer effort score benchmark helps you understand whether customer experiences are becoming easier or harder over time. It works best when the benchmark is tied to a clear touchpoint, consistent question, stable scale, and similar customer segment.
Competitive and global benchmarks can add context, but internal benchmarking is often the most useful for improving customer experience. If customers need less effort to complete important tasks, your support, product, and service journeys are moving in the right direction.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A customer effort score benchmark is a reference point for comparing how easy or difficult customers find a specific experience. It helps you measure progress across support, onboarding, checkout, self-service, or other customer journey touchpoints.
Customer Effort Score is usually calculated by averaging responses to a CES survey question. For example, if customers rate ease on a 1-to-7 scale, the total score is divided by the number of responses.
A lower Customer Effort Score is better when the question asks how much effort the customer had to put in. If the question asks how easy the experience was, a higher score usually means better performance.
CES measures how easy it was to complete an action. NPS measures loyalty and likelihood to recommend, while CSAT measures satisfaction with a specific experience. Many customer experience teams track all three together.
Businesses should benchmark CES regularly for key touchpoints, such as monthly or quarterly. It is also useful after major changes to support, onboarding, checkout, self-service, or any process that affects customer effort.
