Measure Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) template is designed to help product managers measure how easily customers accomplish their goals while using your product. By pinpointing areas of friction in the customer journey, you can focus on streamlining processes, enhancing usability, and ultimately improving user satisfaction and retention.

Why Use This Template?

Understanding how much effort your customers need to exert is crucial for identifying pain points and opportunities to refine your product. High effort often correlates with dissatisfaction and churn, while a seamless experience fosters loyalty and engagement. This survey provides actionable insights to:

• Identify obstacles preventing customers from achieving their goals.
• Prioritize improvements that directly impact user experience.
• Enhance feature adoption by addressing usability challenges.

What Can You Discover?

This CES template enables you to:

1. Solve Specific Problems:
   
   
   • Pinpoint high-friction areas in your customer journey, such as unclear onboarding steps or complex feature navigation.
   • Uncover reasons behind feature abandonment, like insufficient awareness or perceived risks.
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2. Identify Opportunities:
   
   
   • Optimize workflows to decrease drop-offs and increase user satisfaction.
   • Align your product roadmap with user needs, prioritizing high-impact changes that drive results.

Example Use Case

Imagine you’ve launched a new feature that allows users to schedule recurring reminders for bill payments. Adoption rates, however, are lower than expected. Using the CES survey, you ask a simple question: “How easy was it for you to set up a recurring reminder?” This is followed by an open-ended question: “What made this process difficult or unclear?”

The results reveal that 40% of users didn’t proceed because they found the setup process confusing, particularly the step requiring them to choose between different notification channels. Armed with this insight, your team:

• Redesigns the interface to include a clear, guided setup flow.
• Adds tooltips and pre-filled options to simplify the process.

These changes lead to a 30% increase in feature adoption as more users successfully set up reminders. By reducing perceived effort, you’ve turned a point of friction into a smooth and reliable experience.

In summary:

The CES survey template is your go-to tool for uncovering and addressing barriers to customer success. Whether it's improving a specific feature or refining an end-to-end journey, this template empowers you to take targeted actions that enhance usability, foster trust, and drive results.

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