A customer effort score question asks how easy or difficult it was to complete one task. For example: “How easy was it to get help with your issue today?” Pair it with a labeled response scale and an optional “What made it easy or difficult?” follow-up.
This guide is for support, customer success, and service teams choosing a CES survey question. It includes an agreement-based starter, six task-specific alternatives, and a fictional scoring example. Choose one main effort question for the experience you want to understand.
With Youform, you can collect an effort rating and an optional explanation, use conditional logic for relevant follow-ups, and send responses to Google Sheets for analysis. Start with the customer effort score survey template, then follow the setup below to adapt it to your customer’s task.
A two-question customer effort survey to start with
For a support interaction, use this agreement statement:
[Company] made it easy for me to get help with my issue today.
Ask the customer how much they agree, using these seven ordered choices:
- Strongly disagree
- Disagree
- Somewhat disagree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Somewhat agree
- Agree
- Strongly agree
Then ask: “What made getting help easy or difficult?” Make that comment optional.
This starter uses the seven-point agreement format from CES 2.0. [2] It focuses the statement on getting help, so it can also be answered by someone whose issue remains unresolved.
Ease and resolution are separate. If your team needs to know whether the issue was resolved, add a separate question with Yes, Partly, No, and Not sure. Keep its result separate from CES. Someone may have found it easy to contact you and still need help.
6 customer effort score question examples for different tasks
These are original alternatives for teams measuring specific customer tasks. Use an ease scale that directly answers the selected question; do not pair “How easy…?” with agreement labels.
1. Contacting support
How easy was it to reach our support team today? Ask after the attempt to get in touch. This measures access to support, including people who struggled to reach someone. It does not measure the usefulness of the advice.
2. Getting an issue resolved
How easy was it to resolve [issue] with our support team? Use this for customers whose issue was resolved. If you also invite unresolved customers, first ask about the outcome and route them to a question about getting help. Do not force an unresolved customer to rate a completed resolution.
3. Completing a purchase
How easy was it to complete your purchase today? Ask after checkout. Add an optional comment about the difficult step. Keep checkout effort separate from product satisfaction, delivery, and price.
4. Finding information
How easy was it to find the delivery information you needed? Name the information instead of asking about the whole website. Include “I didn’t look for this information” separately from the scored scale when your invitation reaches people who did not attempt the task.
5. Getting started with a product
How easy was it to set up your first [project]? Define the milestone in language customers recognize. If the task is still in progress, ask about the steps attempted so far and report that group separately from completed setups.
6. Returning an item
How easy was it to request a return for your order? Ask after the request. A later question can measure receiving the refund. Combining both into one rating makes it hard to locate the friction.
CES focuses on effort within an individual service interaction. [1] Choose your invitation timing around the task you actually ask about. A post-checkout survey will not tell you how abandoned checkouts felt.
Choose the CES scale before collecting answers
Write down the question, labels, numerical coding, and scoring method together. Two surveys can both be called CES while using different directions or summaries.
| Format | Example choices | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Agreement with an ease statement | 1 Strongly disagree through 7 Strongly agree | Higher numbers mean more agreement that it was easy. |
| A direct ease question | 1 Very difficult, 2 Difficult, 3 Neither easy nor difficult, 4 Easy, 5 Very easy | Higher numbers mean easier. |
| A direct effort question | 1 Very low effort through 5 Very high effort | Higher numbers mean more effort. |
The five-point labels and coding are suggested examples. Keep “Not applicable” or “I didn’t attempt this” outside the numeric scale, and exclude them from the score denominator. They do not mean a neutral experience.
Preserve your wording and scale when comparing periods. If you change them, record a new survey version and report the results separately until you have a defensible comparison. Question wording and response choices affect how people answer, so pretest your survey. [3] Avoid asking “Was support quick and helpful?” as one effort measure; see double-barreled questions and their fixes.
How to calculate and report customer effort score
For the seven-point agreement starter, one descriptive summary is the mean coded rating:
Mean CES = sum of (rating × number of answers at that rating) ÷ number of valid scored answers.
This treats the numerical steps as equally spaced for the summary. The response categories are ordered, so retain the counts at each point alongside the mean. Do not let a single average replace the distribution.
Here, 10 answers at 4, 20 at 6, and 20 at 7 give (4 × 10 + 6 × 20 + 7 × 20) ÷ 50 = 6. Report “Mean agreement-based CES: 6 on a 1–7 scale; 50 scored answers.” Higher means easier for this positively worded statement.
You can separately report the share agreeing. If you define agreement as ratings 5–7, this example gives 40 ÷ 50 × 100 = 80%. State the threshold; “80% agreement” and “mean CES 6” are different summaries. Neither is NPS or CSAT.
The CES calculator computes both summaries from five- or seven-point agreement counts. Its interpretation assumes higher ratings mean easier. Do not paste counts from a scale where higher means more difficulty and interpret the output as better. Check the question and coding first.
There is no single target in this guide that makes every CES survey good. Start with your own consistent baseline, response count, distribution, and comments. Changes in who answered or which tasks they attempted can change the result.
Build a focused CES survey in Youform
Use Youform to collect the rating and the reason behind it in the same survey. Share the form by link or embed it on your website, and connect Google Sheets to review ratings and comments together. Once you have counted the scored answers, use the CES calculator to calculate the mean rating and agreement percentage.
- Choose the touchpoint. Write down who will receive the invitation and which task they attempted. Decide where the survey link belongs in your existing support, checkout, or onboarding workflow.
- Create the questions. Start with a template or a blank form. Edit the question wording and options to match the task you are measuring. The Youform creation guide covers editing and previewing a form.
- Set the answer format. A single-choice question can display every label. Keep the options ordered, allow one answer, and add a separate unscored option only when relevant. Record how labels map to numbers for analysis.
- Add the optional explanation. Use one text question, or configure conditional logic for a relevant follow-up. For example, ask about the difficult step after a low ease rating. Test each path, including skipped optional answers.
- Review before sharing. Preview on a phone and check the public responder link while signed out. Confirm that labels fit, instructions describe one task, and the ending provides a useful next step. Publish only when your team is ready.
- Choose where to review answers. Review submissions in Youform or connect Google Sheets. Keep the form version, question wording, rating mapping, invitation dates, and scored-response count with your analysis.
Youform Free includes conditional logic, website embeds, Google Sheets, and unlimited forms and responses within fair use. Your own logo, custom domains, partial submissions, and advanced drop-off analytics require Pro. Check current plans for those features.
Set up post-ticket or post-purchase invitations in your existing support or checkout workflow, then check the timing and audience before sharing.
Turn an effort rating into a useful change
Use an optional follow-up that helps locate the obstacle: “Which step was difficult?”, “What information was missing?”, or “What would have made this task easier?” Choose one that suits the task. Invite an answer in the customer’s own words before assuming the cause.
In a fictional support example, a low ease rating and “I had to repeat my order details” could prompt a review of the handoff between teams. Record the proposed change and who owns it, then review comparable interactions after the change. A CES score alone does not prove the cause or predict whether a particular customer will leave.
Report how many people answered and who was invited. Feedback from people who completed a task may miss those who gave up. Read scores alongside unresolved cases, comments, and existing operational data; explain changes to invitation methods before claiming improvement.
For satisfaction or recommendation measures, see the CSAT, NPS, and CES survey guide. For a broader conversation, use customer feedback questions. Create a free Youform account when you are ready to build your own focused effort survey.
Sources
Reviewed .
- Harvard Business Review: Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers (2010), Dixon, Freeman and Toman.
- Dixon, Toman and DeLisi (2013), The Effortless Experience; Appendix D: CES 2.0 starter kit (PDF).
- Pew Research Center: wording, response choices, and pretesting
- Youform: current plan boundaries