CES: what it is and how to calculate it

Cloud4Feed Research Team ·Updated 22 Oct 2026 ·5 min read

Customer Effort Score measures how much effort customers had to put in to get something done. In its current form customers rate a statement such as “The company made it easy for me to handle my issue” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The score is the percentage who agree.

The metric was introduced in 2010 by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB, now part of Gartner) in the Harvard Business Review article “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers”. Its research found that, in service interactions, reducing effort was more closely linked to loyalty than exceeding expectations. An updated version, CES 2.0, followed in 2013.

Disagree (1–3)Neutral (4)Agree (5–7)1234567Strongly disagreeStrongly agree

CES = (Responses of 5–7 ÷ Total responses) × 100

1. 1Count every response to the CES statement.
2. 2Count the responses that agree: every 5, 6 and 7.
3. 3Divide the agree responses by the total.
4. 4Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Enter the number of responses for each answer. The score updates as you type.

The original question was hard to read consistently: some customers misread which end of the scale meant “good”. CES 2.0 replaced it with an agreement statement, and that is the version most teams use today.

A good CES depends on the task and the channel: renewing a subscription should feel easier than filing an insurance claim. The most useful comparison is your own trend and the gap between channels and processes that serve the same need.

Watch the neutral answers too. A large share of 4s usually means the experience was neither easy nor clearly hard, and the comments will show what slowed people down. If you use an external benchmark, check its date, sample, scale and whether it uses CES 1.0 or 2.0.

The score says how many customers struggled; the comments say where. Tag each mention of a step, form, wait or hand-off so the friction points become visible.

Contact customers who answered 1 to 3, solve what is still open and tell them what changed. High-effort experiences are the ones most likely to drive customers away. See the closing-the-loop guide.

Customers who have to call back, repeat their story or move from the website to the phone report much higher effort. Fix the first-contact gaps that cause the most repeats.