customer effort score: a new metric to stare at?
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Customer Effort Score:a new ‘single’ metric to stare at?
4C Consult ing | The proof i s in the people
By Geert Martens & Geert Teunkens
Page 1 / 4
Image credit: http://momanddadmoney.com
The Rise of a New Metric
We measure the world by what we see and
what we want to reach. With this in mind it is easy to
explain the success of the Net Promoter Score along
with the increasing popularity of social media since
2004. Suddenly digitised versions of word-of-mouth
had a major impact on marketing objectives. NPS, a
simplif ied way to measure customer engagement has
proven very successful in detecting how our brands
and products wil l survive the ultimate market test:
Will customers promote me among their peers?
The rise of NPS was a great way to put the customer’s
opinion back on the agenda of management boards
around the world, an evolution we at 4C Consulting
can only cheer upon.
But the times are ever a-changing and a new metric
is making way: the Customer Effort Score (CES)
introduced by C.E.B. in 2010.
If NPS taught us one thing it is that customers are
more likely to share negative experiences as opposed
to positive ones. Therefore it is not a coincidence that
this new metric helps companies focus on internal
process improvements, stil l with better customer
experiences at the centre of attention.
And it sure is simple; the score consists of a 5-scale
answer on one single question: How much effort did
you personally have to put in to get your problem
fixed? Research has shown CES to be a better
predictor for customer loyalty then both traditional
customer satisfaction surveys and NPS. Should we
stop everything we are doing and simply jump on
the next train? Yes and no. CES offers a lot of value
but no single metric will ever suffice to effectively
evaluate the total customer experience chain. At
4C Consulting we believe the smart thing to do is to
integrate CES in the metric ecosystem.
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September 2013Customer Effort Score
Introducing ‘Effort-elasticity’
When customers refer to the effort they had
to invest in researching, purchasing or using a product
or service, they are usually referring to the combined
effect of different types of effort:
• Cognitiveeffort:theamountofmentalenergy
required,suchasreadingtermsandconditions;
• Timeeffort:theamountoftimeittakestowait,
consumeortransact;
• Physicaleffort:theamountofefforttodo
something;
• Emotionaleffort:howmuchnegativevspositive
energyisrequired,i .e.theextenttowhich
somethingfrustratesthecustomer.
From the research we do for our clients, we have
learned that a customer ’s will ingness to invest effort
into an interaction depends on:
• thenatureoftheinteraction
• theperceivedvalueoftheoutcomeofthe
interaction
• thereasonwhytheinteractionistakingplace:
intendedbythecustomerornot
Let’s i l lustrate this with Tomorrowland, the Belgian
dance festival of which, in 2013, the ticketing system
was the victim of its major worldwide popularity.
With more than a mill ion likes on Facebook it is no
surprise that the festival sold out in a flash even
when forcing customers to stick to their screens
for over eight hours on a sunny day. Tomorrowland
was asking their customers to invest tremendous
effort in buying a ticket, yet an NPS survey among
visitors would most certainly stil l turn out positive
since customers promote the festival on a holistic
level; DJ’s, catering... not only the ticketing service.
In this example, the perceived value of the outcome
of the interaction was very high and the interaction
was initiated by the customer. As a result, customers
were will ing to invest ‘timeeffort’, and to some
extent even ‘physicaleffort ’ in this interaction.
Product characteristics can compensate for negative
experiences on single interactions and brand
advocates will even endure very negative experiences
-for a l imited time- in order to get to your product.
But what if you would compare ‘Havingtowaitfor
hoursinarowtobuyaticketforTomorrowland’
with ‘Havingtowait30minutestotalktoacontact
centeragenttohaveyourinternetconnectionfixed ’?
The will ingness to invest effort in the latter, would
be very low: the outcome is of l imited ‘true’ added
value (‘ I alreadypayforaninternetconnectionthat
shouldworkallthetime ’) and a perceived failure of
the supplier triggered the event (‘ I didn’tevenwantto
callyouinthefirstplace’).
The lower a customer ’s will ingness to invest effort
into an interaction, the more important for an
organization to make the interaction as easy as
possible and, hence, increasing the value of CES as a
strategic metric for this interaction.
The Metric Ecosystem
Customer experiences happen at three levels:
the overall relationship, customer journeys, and
discrete interactions.
As often seen with new hypes, the ‘newkidintown’
proves strongest where its predecessor lost track.
Where NPS is a good way to measure performance
of the overall brand and distinct end-to-end
journeys, it is not always easy to pinpoint actionable
improvement areas for specific interactions. This is
where CES offers a major advantage. Since customer
effort is best measured on an interactional level
it brings a lot of information exactly on which
interactions are causing negative arousal, making
immediate steering possible.
Not only do NPS and CES differ with respect to
the level of the experience at which they are best
September 2013Customer Effort Score
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measured, they also measure fundamentally different
components of the customer experience.
CES, much like customer satisfaction (CSAT) is a
perception metric. Perception metrics do not measure
reality but, hence the name, measure customers’
subjective perception of their interactions. This
includes measuring what a customer thinks and feels
at every step in the customer journey. CES does not
tell you an interaction was difficult or easy, but how it
was perceived.
‘Reality ’ metrics, or descriptive metrics measure
observable and objective characteristics of customer
interactions: when, where,and through which
channels customers touched the company. (Average
call time, Calls lost before answered, Average pages
per visit, Average transaction value,...)
NPS belongs to a third type of metrics: outcome
metrics. Outcome metrics measure what customers
are likely to do or actually did after their interaction
(Likelihood to recommend, Likelihood to purchase,
Churn rates, Actual purchases made, Policy renewals)
NPS is the result of a broader, more holistic view,
summarizing multiple aspects at the same time:
customer effort, brand values, product characteristics,
performance relative to competition, and -most
importantly- emotional engagement. NPS is a great
way to measure the customer ’s opinion across
channels, contact moments and experiences and
is therefore a very useful source of information on
brand advocacy and your position on the market.
The most effective measurement programs evaluate
the customer experience at all three levels of
interaction (brand, customer journey, single
interaction) and use a balanced mix of perception,
description and outcome metrics.
How to improve your CES?
Satisfaction is the result of benchmarking
your expectations against your perception of an
actual performance. This also applies to customer
effort. As a result, the most effective way to improve
the customer effort score on a distinct interaction,
combines three approaches:
1. Reducingtheactualeffort=improveyour
performance
2. Managingyourcustomer ’sexpectations
3. Reducingtheperceivedeffort
(1) Reducing the actual effort. Within our customer
care practice, we have been actively working with our
clients to minimize customer efforts by:
• analyzingnegativefeedbackandrepeatcallsto
improvedownstreamprocesses;
• empoweringcontactcentreagentstosolve
problemsandtrainingthemontheemotional
sideofhandlingdisgruntledcustomers;
• minimizingchannelswitchingeffortsby
mappingoptimalcustomerjourneysfordifferent
customersegments.
(2) Managing expectations: under-promise, over-
deliver. Regardless your actual performance,
influencing the expectations of your customers,
will impact their satisfaction levels. Disney has
been applying this insight for years with always
underpromising-overdelivering waiting queues at
their most popular rides. Few companies are as
celebrated for their ability to manage queues and
customer waits as Disney: ‘TheMousehasraised
movingpeoplethroughlinestoascience.’
(3) Reducing perceived effort. You have to describe
the intended experience before it happens. Saying
something will be easy, increases the chance of it
being perceived as easy. Involving the customer in
order to reach this claim, call it co-delivery if you
will, turns out to be very effective in managing
perceptions. For several years, the baseline of a
successful international airline carrier was ‘Help us
stay express by carrying less’. By saying this, nobody
will doubt that your solution indeed will be express,
as long as they keep their part of the promise. So
in order to reduce the perceived effort for your
customers, you could give your customers specific
instructions to do something (bring documents,
read instructions, order in advance,...) and explicitly
mention that this will enable you to provide your
customers with an effort-free experience...
In most of cases switching focus to customer effort
requires a mindset change towards traditional
performance measures. Enabling customers to
transfer money with a mobile app decreases home
bank traffic and associated cross sell opportunities.
When for a telecom player we included a ‘make-an-
appointmentflow’ at the end of each service call
where a face-to-face contact was required, customers
no longer had to locate the nearest point-of-sale and
stand in line to get service. Average call handling time
for contact agents however, went up. All this has to
be considered together with the long term advantages
that enabled customers bring along.
Contact us
Do you agree? Do you have any experience to share
with us? Please let us know!
Geert Martens
Partner
T: +32 15 281 281
Tw: @geert_martens
Geert Teunkens
Senior Consultant
T: +32 15 281 281
Tw: @Joeng_Teun
September 2013
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Customer Effort Score