# Customer Effort Score (CES)

> Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easy it was for someone to get a task done.

Source: https://synthiya.ai/glossary/customer-effort-score · Updated 2026-10-09 · By Synthiya

A CES survey asks a question like "How easy was it to solve your problem today?" People answer on a scale from very hard to very easy. Scales vary, such as 1 to 5 or 1 to 7. Teams often report the average, or the percent who said it was easy.

CES is a good fit for support, onboarding, setup and cancelling. These are the moments where effort is easy to feel.

## Why it matters

When a task feels hard, people may give up on it, or on you. A low effort score points to the steps that need to be simpler. Pair it with an open question, like "What made this hard?"

> **Example:**
> After setup, you ask "How easy was it to connect your account?" Most people say easy, but people who use one bank say hard. That tells you exactly where to look.