Customer Effort Score (CES) Calculator

About this calculator

The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a customer-experience metric built around a single survey question: 'How easy was it to get your issue resolved (or complete your task)?', usually answered on a 1-5 or 1-7 scale from 'very difficult' to 'very easy'. CES is calculated as the average of all responses, and it was popularized by CEB (now Gartner) research showing that reducing customer effort predicts loyalty better than simply delighting customers.

Support and customer-experience (CX) teams track CES after interactions like a support ticket, live chat, or onboarding flow, using it alongside NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) to get a fuller picture: NPS measures long-term advocacy, CSAT measures satisfaction with one moment, and CES measures friction. A low average effort score is one of the strongest predictors of repeat purchases and reduced churn, because customers who struggle to get help are far more likely to switch providers even if the outcome was eventually resolved.

This calculator takes your total score across all responses and the number of responses, then returns the average CES so you can benchmark it against your own historical trend or industry norms.