Customer Effort Score: How to Measure & Improve It [2026]

The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a crucial metric for enterprises aiming to enhance customer loyalty and reduce churn by minimizing the effort customers must exert to resolve issues. Developed by researchers from The Corporate Executive Board, now part of Gartner, CES has been shown to outperform other metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) in predicting customer loyalty. The CES framework emphasizes the importance of reducing customer effort over exceeding expectations, with low-effort interactions leading to higher repurchase rates and positive word of mouth. In the context of digital transformation and the rise of Generative AI, organizations are focusing on designing conversational systems that reduce friction by addressing structural issues like repeated contacts and channel switching. Strategies such as automated workflows, omnichannel consistency, and seamless human-agent handoffs are pivotal in achieving low CES. Voiceflow is highlighted as a platform that offers tools to tackle these challenges by enabling scalable and context-aware conversational design, thereby helping enterprises improve CES quickly and effectively.