CES calculator: your customer effort score

Very difficult (1) 2 3 4 5 6 Very easy (7) Or paste raw scores from 1 to 7

Customer effort score —

Found it easy (5–7) — of everyone who answered

Worked out in your browser. Nothing you type or paste leaves this page.

How the customer effort score is calculated

A customer effort score comes from one question, asked straight after an interaction: how easy was it to get what you needed?, answered from 1 (very difficult) to 7 (very easy). Some teams phrase it as agreement with "the company made it easy for me to handle my issue". The maths is the same either way.

There are two common ways to report it, and this calculator shows both:

The average score, from 1 to 7. Higher is easier.
The share who found it easy: the percentage who answered 5, 6 or 7.

Pick one and use it every time, so the trend means something. The average moves with every answer. The share is easier to explain to people outside the support team.

A worked example

Say 100 customers answered: 3 gave a 1, 4 gave a 2, 8 gave a 3, 15 gave a 4, 22 gave a 5, 28 gave a 6 and 20 gave a 7. The average is (3×1 + 4×2 + 8×3 + 15×4 + 22×5 + 28×6 + 20×7) ÷ 100 = 5.13. The share who found it easy is 22 + 28 + 20 = 70 out of 100, or 70%.

In Excel or Google Sheets

With the raw scores in column A, starting at A2, the average is:

=ROUND(AVERAGE(A2:A1000), 2)

And the share who found it easy:

=ROUND(COUNTIF(A2:A1000,">=5") / COUNT(A2:A1000) * 100, 1)

Making the score useful

Effort is about friction, so read the low scores' comments first. They name the exact step that made someone work too hard. Track the score per channel too (chat, email, phone or help centre), since effort is often very different from one to another.

Collect the responses first

Customer effort score (CES) survey template

How easy was it to get help? One 1–7 question, then what made it easy or what got in the way. 5 questions, about 55 seconds.

Use this template → See the questions

Questions people ask

What's a good customer effort score?

Higher is better, and the trend matters more than any single number. Compare yourself with last month, and look at which channels score lowest.

Why a 1 to 7 scale?

Seven points leave room to see small improvements. On a five-point scale, most answers bunch at the top and changes are hard to spot.

What's the difference between CES, CSAT and NPS?

CES asks how easy something was, CSAT how satisfied someone was, and NPS whether they'd recommend you. The CSAT calculator and NPS calculator work out the other two.

Where can I collect CES responses for free?

hootform's CES survey template asks the 1 to 7 question, then asks what made it easy or what got in the way, with unlimited responses on the free plan.

CES calculator