The optimal customer experience is the primary factor that allows you to stand out from the competition. Your Customer Effort Score is an important indicator of this. In this blog you will read how to lower your CES and optimize your customer satisfaction.

What is CES?

The Customer Effort Score is a value, on a scale of one to five, that expresses how much effort customers have to put in to get something done as your customer. How much energy does it take to reach customer service and ask a question? And, more importantly, getting that question answered. The higher the score, the more effort the customer has to put in. And that doesn’t exactly have a positive effect on the customer experience.

How does CES work?

You measure such a Customer Effort Score by simply asking customers how much energy they had to put into getting their question answered. But just a score, of course, doesn’t tell you enough. Knowing that a customer is not satisfied is one thing. By asking why someone experienced so much effort after the CES question, you gain insight. And thanks to that insight, you can improve your processes.

How do you lower CES?

According to Stichting KIRC, the knowledge institute for customer interaction in the Netherlands and Belgium, the FCR – First Contact Right or First Call Resolution, also known as First Time Fix or First Time Right – has a direct effect on customer satisfaction. By focusing on the FCR, you can bring down the CES. And increasing your FCR again starts with … insight. We wrote a blog about that earlier. A good reporting system gives you insight into how your employees are performing, but you also know how many conversations there were on a particular topic and whether they were positive or negative conversations.

Efficient customer contact environment

But an efficient customer contact environment brings you more. Because your employees have easy access to customer history, they know immediately who they are in contact with, and your customer feels recognized and known – regardless of which employee is on the line and which channel they are using. Even better, your employee can even proactively engage with your customer. For example, are you expecting a delayed delivery? By proactively approaching your customers, you manage expectations and turn a negative message into a positive experience. If you see customer contact as a continuous process consisting of a communication layer, a handling layer and a control layer, you create a 360-degree customer view and you can offer an even better experience to every customer, now and in the future. And that is guaranteed to have a – positive – impact on your Customer Effort Score.

Curious?

By structuring your quality process, you contribute to the future-proofing and success of your organization, both in the short and long term. Do you also want to stand out in the market? Then contact us without obligation. We will gladly work with you to find the ultimate solution for your customer contact center. Want to get acquainted first? Stay informed by signing up for our newsletter.