SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES) Calculator

Think of the Customer Effort Score (CES) as the level of ease for your SaaS users to perform their task using your software. A high CES usually indicates a positive outcome.

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    Understand CES Importance

    CES measures the effort customers expend to use your SaaS.

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    Implement CES Effectively

    Utilize CES to identify friction points and improve user experience.

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    Leverage CES Insights

    Use CES data to enhance customer support and product development.

📊 Input Values

📈 Results

SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES)

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The Customer Effort Score (CES) is calculated by dividing the sum of all individual CES scores by the total number of survey responses. A lower score indicates less customer effort required, while a higher score suggests more effort is needed.

How to Calculate SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES)

Follow these steps to calculate your SaaS CES score: 

  1. Collect Individual CES scores from customer surveys. These scores typically range from 1 (Very Low Effort) to 7 (Very High Effort), collected after a customer interacts with your support or product.
  2. Sum all Individual CES scores collected in Step 1. For example, if you received scores of 3, 4, 2, 5, and 3, the total would be 17.
  3. Count the total number of survey responses. This is the total number of customers who provided a CES score. In the previous example, the count is 5, since there were 5 individual scores.
  4. Apply the CES formula. Divide the Sum of All Individual CES Scores (17 from Step 2) by the Total Number of Survey Responses (5 from Step 3). Using the example, 17 divided by 5 equals 3.4.
  5. Determine your SaaS CES. The result from Step 4 is your SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES). In our example, the SaaS CES is 3.4. A lower CES indicates that customers find it easy to interact with your company or product, while a higher score suggests customers have to work too hard to achieve their goals.

Note: Collect responses from a representative sample of your customer base for the most accurate CES.

SaaS CES = Sum of All Individual CES Scores / Total Number of Survey Responses

Understanding SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES)

Ioana Grigorescu

January 27, 2025

What is SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES)?

The SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much work a customer must put in to use your software or fix a problem.

A high score suggests that the software is difficult to use and, as a result, does not offer a satisfactory user experience. CES is essentially used to assess how simple it is for customers to interact with a customer’s goods.

  • It detects user friction areas in your SaaS solution and lowers turnover.

     

  • Identifies areas for simplification and directs development efforts to improve the user experience.

     

  • Highlights obstacles to onboarding and assistance, which maximizes efficiency. 

Practical Examples of SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES)

  • Example 1: A company introduced a new online billing system. Initially, customers had to navigate through five pages to pay their bill, resulting in a CES of 5. After streamlining the process to just one page, the CES reduced to 1, significantly improving customer satisfaction.
  • Example 2: A software firm required users to submit support requests through a complicated form that involved 10 input fields across multiple pages. This process scored a CES of 10. Following customer feedback, the firm decreased the fields to just 3, lowering the CES to 3.
  • Example 3: A retail website implemented a new feature allowing customers to access purchase history. Originally, accessing this feature required logging in, navigating to account settings, and then selecting purchase history, totaling a CES of 3. Improvements were made to access this feature directly from the dashboard, reducing the CES to 1.
Time Period Total Responses Sum of CES Scores Average CES Period-Over-Period Change Percentage Change Trend Analysis
Q1 2023 500 1750 3.5 – – Initial period. Baseline CES score of 3.5.
Q2 2023 550 1870 3.4 -0.1 -2.86% Slight decrease in CES, needs investigation.
Q3 2023 600 2100 3.5 0.1 2.94% CES back to baseline. Improvement needed for better score.

CES = 175 / 50 = 3.5

Different Ways to Calculate SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES)

  • Email surveys: Following particular contacts or purchases, send a tailored email survey to your clients. helpful for gathering opinions regarding the perceived amount of work needed to use your services.
  • Post-Interaction Surveys: As soon as a consumer interacts with your service, ask them to fill out a survey. Getting real-time feedback on client effort is much easier with this strategy.

How to Improve Your SaaS Customer Effort Score (CES)

  • Map the client journey: To find possible points of annoyance or misunderstanding, make a graphic depiction of every client interaction with your product.
  • Simplify navigation: Make your SaaS product more intuitive by simplifying your UI to improve usability and process flow.
  • Create an extensive knowledge base: Create tutorials, FAQs, and articles that cover frequently asked topics and problems to help clients locate answers more quickly.
  • Put in-app guidance into practice: Utilize contextual assistance, tooltips, and walkthroughs to deliver pertinent and timely information right within your application.
  • Improve onboarding: Create easy-to-understand onboarding instructions to speed up the user’s acclimation process and enhance their first impression.
  • Provide support for multiple channels: Ensure responsiveness and well-organized service by offering easily available help via a variety of channels, including chat, email, and phone.
  • Track and respond to feedback: To improve the user experience, continuously monitor customer feedback and satisfaction (CSAT) and make adjustments based on customer insights.

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