What Does CES Stand For? Customer Effort Score and How to Boost It?
what does ces stand for “Customer Effort Score,” a metric that helps explain how easy your customer experience is. CES is important for companies to pay attention to because the easier your customers find it to interact with you, the more likely they are to stick around.
The main reason companies should care about CES is that it is a direct measure of customer loyalty. The lower your CES, the more likely you will lose those customers. So how do you improve your CES?
One is to ensure that all your customer touchpoints are easy to navigate and find what they need. If they must spend too much time hunting around on the site or scrolling through pages and pages of content, they will probably get frustrated and leave.
Why does your customer effort score matter?
The customer effort score is a direct measure of customer loyalty. The lower your CES, the more likely you will lose those customers. So how do you improve your CES? One is to ensure that all your customer touchpoints are easy to navigate and find what they need.
If they must spend too much time hunting around on the site or scrolling through pages and pages of content, they’ll probably get frustrated and leave. Another way to improve your CES is to ensure that your customer support is responsive and helpful. If you do not have a great team of people answering questions, ensuring that customers can get in touch with someone who knows what they are talking about will go a long way toward improving your CES.
Keeping a close eye on your score
You can start by monitoring it regularly, making sure that there isn’t any sudden drop in your score. If you do see a drop, take some time to figure out why and make the necessary changes so that it does not happen again.
Having someone on your team responsible for monitoring the score is also a good idea. That way, if there is ever an issue with your customer support, they can fix it immediately rather than wait until after CES has been completed.
It is also important to note that you don’t want to monitor your CES score when it drops; you need to check it regularly to see how it changes over time. That will help you identify trends and ensure they are not causing any issues with your customers.
How to boost your customer effort score (CES)
You can do several things to boost your customer effort score. First, you should ensure that your customers know what they are getting when interacting with your company. That means that if there are any details involved with the purchase process (like shipping times), you need to make sure that these details are not left in the air—they should be clearly stated. You have to understand the voice of the customer program.
The next thing that you can do is to make the process of purchasing from your company as simple as possible. That means fewer steps in their journey and less confusion about what they should do next.
One of the best ways to make your purchasing process simple is to offer a “one-click buy” option. That means that customers can purchase whatever they want from you with just one click—no more adding items to their shopping cart and going through all the steps in checking out.
Re-examine policies that force customers to resolve issues:
The last thing you want to do is force your customers to spend time on issues that are not related directly to their purchases. If you have policies requiring customers to resolve issues before they can make a purchase, then it may be time for you to re-examine those policies. You may want to consider removing these unnecessary steps as part of your effort to eliminate friction from the purchasing process.
One of the most common complaints about online stores is that it’s hard to get in touch with anyone if there are problems or questions. You can eliminate this problem by making it easy for customers to contact you. Provide an email address on every page of your website, along with a toll-free phone number and live chat features.
Find the triggers customers find frustrating
For example, if your customers are annoyed by having to create an account before making a purchase, it may be time for you to re-examine those policies.
Another way to eliminate friction is to provide value, especially in the early stages of your customer’s journey. For example, why not offer a discount or free shipping on the first purchase from new customers if you run an eCommerce site? That will entice them to make a purchase and give them a reason to return.
Put more effort into making the experience easy:
The more complicated your product is, the more effort it will take for your customers to figure out how to use it. That can lead to frustration and cause them to abandon their purchase prematurely. A great way to reduce friction is by simplifying your product or service so that it’s easier for people to understand how they can get value from it.
For example, if you are selling an app, do not make people pay for the full version before trying it out. Instead, offer a free trial and let them get a taste of what your product offers so that they have a better idea of whether it is worth their time and money.
Conclusion
By understanding what does ces stand for, you can see it is not easy to regain the customer that is lost. As customers of all types have greater power than ever before, which means losing them is more important than ever. If you have low CES, you are wasting your precious time and resources on reaching out to customers who will likely convert at a lower rate than they would have otherwise. That is something that no brand wants to deal with, so put your CES analysis ideas into action and see what helps increase customer loyalty.