Customer Effort Score (CES) — Complete Guide

Customer effort score (CES) measures how easy or difficult it is for a customer to accomplish something with your product. In the context of onboarding, it answers a simple question: "How hard was it to get started?"

This one metric predicts customer loyalty better than satisfaction scores. It predicts better than NPS. The reason is intuitive: people don't leave products they're unhappy with nearly as often as they leave products that feel like work to use.

What is customer effort score

CES is a survey-based metric that asks customers to rate the ease of a specific experience. The standard question is:

"[Company] made it easy for me to [do something]."

Customers respond on a 1-7 scale:

• 1 = Strongly disagree
• 2 = Disagree
• 3 = Somewhat disagree
• 4 = Neither agree nor disagree
• 5 = Somewhat agree
• 6 = Agree
• 7 = Strongly agree

Your CES is the average of all responses. Higher scores mean lower effort. Lower effort means happier, more loyal customers.

CEB (now Gartner) introduced CES in 2010 after research showed that reducing customer effort was a stronger driver of loyalty than delighting customers. The finding challenged the common belief that you need to exceed expectations. In reality, you just need to make things easy.

Why CES matters for onboarding

Onboarding is where effort hits hardest. Customers are learning your product, setting up their account, and figuring out how things work. Every unnecessary step, confusing instruction, or broken flow adds effort. And effort during onboarding has outsized consequences.

Here's why.

Effort predicts loyalty

Gartner's customer effort research reports that 96% of customers with high-effort service experiences become disloyal, compared with 9% after low-effort experiences. That gap is enormous. And it shows up most clearly during onboarding, when customers form their lasting impression of your product.

Effort drives churn

Customers who struggle during onboarding are far more likely to cancel. They haven't yet built the habits, integrations, or team adoption that create switching costs. If getting started feels hard, walking away feels easy.

Effort is actionable

Unlike NPS, which tells you whether customers would recommend you (but not why), CES points directly to specific experiences you can improve. A low CES on your setup flow tells you exactly where to focus. A low NPS tells you something is wrong somewhere.

Effort compounds

A difficult onboarding experience doesn't just cost you the customer's goodwill in the moment. It colors every future interaction. Customers who had a hard time getting started interpret subsequent issues through a lens of frustration. Customers who had an easy start give you more benefit of the doubt.

How to measure CES for onboarding

Choose your survey question

The standard CES question works well for onboarding:

"OnboardingHub made it easy to get started." Scale: 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree)

You can customize the action. Some variations that work well for onboarding:

• "[Product] made it easy to set up my account."
• "[Product] made it easy to complete my first [key action]."
• "Getting started with [product] was straightforward."

Pick one question and stick with it. Consistency matters more than perfect wording.

Choose when to ask

Timing makes or breaks your CES data. Ask too early and the customer hasn't finished enough to give a meaningful answer. Ask too late and they've forgotten the details.

The best moments to survey during onboarding:

• Right after completing onboarding: The experience is fresh and complete. This is the most common and most useful timing.
• After completing a major milestone: If your onboarding has distinct phases, survey at the end of each phase.
• At the end of the first week: For longer onboarding processes, this catches the overall experience while it's still recent.

Don't ask during onboarding. The customer is busy. Interrupting them with a survey adds the very effort you're trying to reduce.

Choose your delivery method

The best CES surveys are short and in-context. Options include:

• In-app modal: Appears after the customer completes their last onboarding step. Highest response rates (typically 30-50%).
• Email: Sent 24 hours after onboarding completion. Lower response rates (10-20%) but less intrusive.
• Embedded in your product: A small widget on the completion page. Good balance of visibility and non-intrusiveness.

OnboardingHub has CES measurement built in. The survey appears at the right moment in the customer's onboarding flow, and results feed directly into your analytics dashboard. No separate survey tool needed.

Response rate targets

• Good: 20-30% of customers respond
• Great: 30-50% of customers respond
• Excellent: Over 50%

If your response rate is below 20%, try making the survey more visible, simplifying it to one click, or adjusting the timing.

How to calculate CES

The basic calculation is straightforward.

CES = Sum of all responses / Number of responses

If 100 customers responded and the sum of their scores is 570, your CES is 5.7.

Score distribution matters

The average alone doesn't tell the full story. Look at how responses are distributed:

• Healthy distribution: Most responses clustered at 6 and 7, with few below 4.
• Concerning distribution: Responses spread across the entire range, indicating inconsistent experiences.
• Alarming distribution: A cluster at 1-3, meaning a significant group found onboarding difficult.

Two products can have the same average CES of 5.0, but one might have responses evenly spread from 1-7 while the other has responses clustered at 4-6. The second product has a more consistent experience. The first has a significant group of struggling customers to address.

Segment your data

Don't just track one CES number. Break it down by:

• Customer size: Enterprise customers might find your onboarding harder because they have more complex requirements.
• Product plan: Free-tier customers who self-serve may report different effort than customers with dedicated support.
• Onboarding path: If you have different flows for different use cases, compare their CES scores.
• Time period: Track CES over time to see whether your improvements are working.

CES benchmarks

General benchmarks

• Excellent: 6.0 or higher. Customers find your experience genuinely easy.
• Good: 5.0-5.9. Most customers get through without major friction.
• Needs improvement: 4.0-4.9. Significant friction exists.
• Poor: Below 4.0. Customers are struggling. This is urgent.

SaaS onboarding benchmarks

Few companies publish their CES scores, so public benchmarks are limited. Based on industry surveys and aggregated data:

• Self-serve SaaS onboarding: Typically the highest CES of the three models
• Guided SaaS onboarding: Strong CES when guidance is proactive and lightweight
• Enterprise onboarding: Usually lower CES because complexity and dependencies are higher

The trend across industries is a CES between 5.0 and 6.0. If you're below 5.0, you have room to improve. If you're above 6.0, you're doing better than most.

CES vs. NPS vs. CSAT

Each metric tells you something different:

• CES tells you how easy the experience was. Best for identifying friction in specific flows like onboarding.
• NPS tells you how likely the customer is to recommend you. Best for overall brand health.
• CSAT tells you how satisfied the customer was. Best for individual interaction quality.

For onboarding specifically, CES is the most actionable metric. It tells you exactly what to fix. NPS and CSAT are useful as secondary indicators.

How to improve your CES

Reduce steps

Every step in your onboarding flow is a potential point of friction. Audit your flow and ask: "Does this step directly contribute to the customer reaching value?"

If it doesn't, remove it. If it's necessary but could be simpler, simplify it. If it could happen later (after the customer has experienced value), move it.

Common steps that can often be removed or deferred:

• Detailed profile setup (ask for this later)
• Feature tours (let customers discover features as they need them)
• Configuration options with good defaults (set the defaults and let customers change later)
• Account verification (let customers start using the product first)

Simplify each remaining step

For the steps that remain, make each one as easy as possible:

• Clear instructions: Tell the customer exactly what to do and why it matters. One instruction per step.
• Visual guides: Show, don't tell. Screenshots, short videos, and annotated diagrams reduce effort.
• Smart defaults: Pre-fill everything you can. If you know the customer's industry from signup, pre-select relevant options.
• Inline help: Put help content right where the customer needs it, not in a separate knowledge base they have to search.

Fix your worst step first

Look at where customers drop off in your onboarding flow. The step with the highest drop-off rate is likely your highest-effort step. Fix that one first.

Common high-effort steps include:

• Data import: Make it easier with templates, auto-mapping, and clear error messages.
• Integration setup: Provide one-click connections and clear documentation.
• Team invitation: Pre-fill invitation emails and make the accept flow dead simple.
• First content creation: Provide templates so customers don't start from a blank page.

Speed up the experience

Effort isn't just about difficulty. It's also about time. Reducing wait times, page load speeds, and processing delays all reduce perceived effort.

• Eliminate unnecessary loading screens
• Use real-time validation instead of submit-and-check
• Send instant confirmation emails
• Show progress so customers know the system is working

Provide escape hatches

When customers get stuck, they need an easy way to get help without leaving their current flow. Options include:

• Live chat that opens in context
• "Skip for now" buttons on non-critical steps
• Links to relevant help articles within each step
• A clear way to contact support

The worst thing for CES is a customer who's stuck with no obvious path forward.

Close the loop on low scores

When a customer gives you a CES of 1-3, follow up. Ask what was difficult. This does two things: it gives you specific information about what to fix, and it shows the customer you care about their experience.

A simple follow-up:

"Thanks for your feedback. You mentioned our setup process was difficult. Could you tell us which part was hardest? We'd like to make it better."

Keep it short. Don't add effort to the follow-up process.

CES for different onboarding types

Self-serve onboarding

In self-serve onboarding, CES is your most important metric. The customer has no dedicated support person. If they hit friction, they're on their own. Every point of confusion could be their last interaction with your product.

Focus on:

• One-page signup with minimal fields
• Guided first-run experience
• Templates and examples they can start with immediately
• In-context help at every step

High-touch onboarding

Even with dedicated support, CES matters. The customer's experience includes the human interactions (calls, emails) and the product interactions (setup, configuration). Both contribute to effort.

Focus on:

• Clear communication about what happens at each stage
• Easy scheduling for calls and meetings
• Minimal back-and-forth for document collection
• A single place where the customer can see their progress

Hybrid onboarding

Many products use a mix: self-serve for basic setup, human support for complex steps. This is where CES measurement gets especially valuable because it tells you which transitions between self-serve and high-touch feel smooth and which feel jarring.

Focus on:

• Smooth handoffs between automated and human touchpoints
• Consistent experience across channels
• Clear expectations about when a human will be involved

Building a CES improvement program

Month 1: Baseline

• Set up CES measurement in your onboarding flow. OnboardingHub makes this easy with built-in surveys.
• Collect at least 30 responses before drawing conclusions.
• Calculate your average CES and review the distribution.

Month 2: Identify priorities

• Segment your CES data by customer type, plan, and onboarding path.
• Map CES scores to specific onboarding steps if possible.
• Identify the one step or experience causing the most effort.

Month 3: Improve and measure

• Fix the highest-effort step.
• Continue collecting CES data to see the impact.
• Set a target for the next quarter (a 0.5-point improvement is a reasonable first goal).

Ongoing

• Review CES monthly as part of your onboarding metrics cadence.
• Follow up on every score below 3.
• Share CES trends with your product and engineering teams.
• Compare CES with time to value and completion rate for a complete picture.

Start measuring CES today

If you're not measuring CES in your onboarding, you're missing the metric that matters most for predicting customer loyalty. The good news is that it's simple to start. One question, one scale, one survey at the right moment. For more on building a complete measurement program, explore our guides library.

If you're evaluating tools to help you measure and improve CES, our comparison page breaks down how OnboardingHub stacks up.

OnboardingHub includes CES measurement out of the box. When a customer finishes your onboarding guide, they see a one-question survey. The results flow into your analytics dashboard, segmented by guide, time period, and customer. No separate survey tool, no integration work, no setup hassle.

Start your free OnboardingHub account and see how easy it is to track what matters.