CES survey software

Reduce customer effort. Increase loyalty.

Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how easily customers get their questions answered or issues resolved. CES surveys are built into Boast, giving you visibility into your customer support engine.

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Customer rating how easy it was to resolve their issue in a Boast CES survey

What is CES?

Measure the effort, then remove it

When you measure customer effort, you can systematically improve customer experiences. Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric for understanding the amount of effort it takes customers to solve a problem or get an answer to a question. Customer effort is directly related to customer loyalty, so reducing it can have a big impact on your bottom line by reducing churn, increasing referrals and ultimately boosting revenue.

The CES survey. You may want to customize the survey to the type of interaction a customer had, but the standard starting point is “How easy was it to handle your issue?” Customer Effort Score is typically measured on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being “very difficult” and 7 being “very easy.” Collect the rating, then prompt customers to explain why they gave it.

Calculating CES. After surveying your customers, your CES is the average of all responses, giving you a score from 1 to 7.

Benefits

How businesses benefit from CES surveys

  • Reduce negative reviews

    Hear from customers who struggled while the issue is still private. Fix it, follow up, and turn a frustrated customer into a loyal one before they post.

  • Predict future purchases

    CES has been shown to predict whether a customer will buy from you again, giving you insight into retention, churn and potential referral business.

  • Reduce support tickets

    CES surveys show where customers get stuck when solving problems. Improve your documentation and cut the number of support requests you receive.

  • Track trends over time

    Because CES is a single question and a single metric, it's easy to identify changes over time and make business improvements as needed.

  • Improve customer loyalty

    When you know the struggles and complaints customers have, you can solve them faster and keep future customers from the same experience, fueling loyalty.

  • Grow your business

    Happy customers mean repeat purchases and referrals. CES surveys show you how to make customers happier and ultimately grow your business.

The plan

Three steps to CES surveys that send themselves

Boast integrates with your existing tools, so survey requests go out at the right time and you collect valuable data without even thinking about it.

  1. 1

    Ask

    Pick one of 18 proven templates, then send the request by email or SMS, share a link, or embed the form on your site. Boast follows up so you don't have to.

    See how requests work
  2. 2

    Record

    Customers tap the link and record from any phone or laptop. No app, no login. Guided prompts tell them what to talk about, so nobody freezes on camera.

    Meet Guided Prompts
  3. 3

    Share

    Approve with one click. Captions are burned in automatically and the testimonial appears on your website, social channels and ads.

    Explore display widgets
Start measuring CES

Why Boast for CES

Low effort for your customers. Clear answers for your support team.

Boast gives customers an awesome experience from the initial request to the last question, so more of them respond. Then it turns their answers into reports you can act on.
  • Easy for customers: mobile-friendly surveys with no login, sent by email or SMS
  • Fits your process: trigger the survey when a ticket closes through Zapier, then set requests on autopilot with Sequences
  • Robust reporting: identify customers at risk of churning and track CES over time per customer or across the organization
  • One feedback platform: CES plus NPS, CSAT, custom surveys and video testimonials
See customer success use cases
Animated demo of building a CES survey in Boast

Video answers New

When support nails it, let the customer say so on camera.

Add a video question to your CES survey for customers who rate the experience a 7. Guided Prompts walk them through what happened and how your team helped, and Auto Captions burn in subtitles when you approve, so a great support story becomes proof for your website.
  • Conditional logic shows the video question only after a high rating
  • Guided Prompts tell customers exactly what to talk about
  • Captions added automatically, ready for your site and socials
See video testimonials

Proof

Companies serious about customer feedback trust Boast

Real customers, recorded on their own devices and published with one click.

What it costs to wait

Every customer who struggles to get help is quietly deciding whether to stay.

  • Effort you can't see

    Customers who gave up halfway through a help article don't file a ticket. They churn. CES shows you where they got stuck.

  • Tickets that keep coming

    Without knowing where customers struggle, your team answers the same question again and again instead of fixing the cause.

  • Loyalty leaking away

    Customer effort is directly related to loyalty. Every hard interaction makes the next renewal a little less likely.

  • Great support nobody hears about

    When your team resolves an issue brilliantly, that story deserves to be a testimonial, not just a closed ticket.

FAQ

CES questions, answered

What is Customer Effort Score?
Customer Effort Score (CES) measures how much effort it takes a customer to solve a problem or get a question answered. Customer effort is directly related to loyalty, so reducing it cuts churn, increases referrals and boosts revenue.
What does a CES survey ask?
The standard starting point is “How easy was it to handle your issue?” on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is “very difficult” and 7 is “very easy,” followed by a question about why they gave that rating.
How is CES calculated?
Your CES is the average of all responses, giving you a score from 1 to 7.
When should I send a CES survey?
Right after a support interaction, while the experience is fresh. Boast can trigger the survey automatically when a ticket closes in your help desk through Zapier.
How does CES help reduce support tickets?
CES responses show where customers get stuck when trying to solve problems. Use that information to improve your documentation and product so fewer customers need to ask for help.
Can I track CES over time?
Yes. Because CES is a single question and a single metric, Boast reports make it easy to see changes over time per customer or across your organization and act on them.

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