Survey template

Customer effort score (CES) survey

Effort predicts loyalty better than satisfaction does — people leave because something was hard, not because it wasn't delightful. This template asks the CES question about one specific interaction and follows up on exactly where the friction was.

Best for: CX, support, and product teams reducing friction in key customer journeys.

The questions

1. Which interaction is this about?

   Single select

   Tie the score to one recent task — a support ticket, signup, checkout, or a specific feature — so it measures something concrete.

2. How easy was it to get what you needed in that interaction?

   Opinion scale

   The CES question, very difficult to very easy. Keep the wording tied to the specific task, not the product overall.

3. What made it that easy or that hard?

   Long text

   The follow-up that turns the score into a fixable cause — where the friction actually was.

4. How many steps or contacts did it take to resolve?

   Single select

   One / Two / Three / More than three — channel-switching and repeat contacts are the biggest effort drivers.

5. Did you have to repeat yourself or switch channels to get it done?

   Single select

   Yes / No — repeating context is the single most common source of high effort.

6. What would have made that easier?

   Long text

How to run it well

• Fire the survey right after the interaction it's about — a CES question divorced from a specific task measures a vague mood, not effort.
• Word the question around the customer's job ('how easy was it to <do X>'), not your process; effort is felt from their side of the screen.
• Watch the low-effort scores too, not just the high ones — they show you the journeys worth copying across the rest of the product.
• Quantify repeat contacts and channel switches; they correlate with high effort more reliably than any single open complaint.
• Close the loop on high-effort responses fast — a hard interaction left unanswered is the one that churns.

FAQ

How is CES scored?

Average the effort ratings on the scale you use (commonly 1-7 or 1-5), or report the share of respondents who picked the 'easy' end. Either way, track the trend on one specific journey rather than comparing across different interactions.

Why measure effort instead of satisfaction?

Research on customer loyalty found that reducing effort predicts retention better than delighting people does. Customers rarely churn because you didn't exceed expectations — they churn because something was harder than it should have been.

When should a CES survey fire?

Right after the interaction completes — a resolved ticket, a finished signup, a completed checkout. The effort is fresh and the response ties cleanly to one task, which is the whole point of the metric.

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