Measure customer satisfaction: CSAT, CES and NPS Pagina 1 di 8
Measure customer satisfaction:
CSAT, CES and NPS compared
In market research we love acronyms almost as much as the IT world does. Here I
will discuss three of them: CSAT, CES and NPS®. All three of them are used to
measure customer satisfaction. So what do they do? And how do they differ? Can
they be used in conjunction? Read on to find out…
CSAT and NPS to measure customer satisfaction
We all know the widely used “traditional” Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), for
which a respondent has to express his/her satisfaction for a certain topic on a score
from 1-5. In 2003 the Net Promoter ScoreSM (NPS) was introduced. Whereas CSAT is
a useful score to measure short-term happiness of your clients, NPS focuses on
measuring long-term happiness, on customer loyalty. Compared to CSAT, NPS is
claimed to be a better predictor of customer behavior and strongly correlated with
measures of company growth. The NPS score has even been further developed by
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CheckMarket as an automated feedback program [see our article ‘The 4 stages of
Net Promoter Score (NPS)’]. A different measure was introduced in 2010: the
Customer Effort Score (CES), developed by CEB.
The Customer Effort Score (CES)
The Customer Effort Score takes a different angle compared with the previous
measurement tools: the customer is asked how much effort he put into a certain
interaction with the company. Research by CEB, the creators of the Customer Effort
Score, showed that “Service organizations create loyal customers primarily by
reducing customer effort – i.e. helping them solve their problems quickly and easily
– not by delighting them in service interactions”.
There are currently 2 versions available of the CES. The first version of CES – “How
much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?” on a
5-point scale from very low effort (1) to very high effort (5) – has caused some
complications as the scale is inverted (1 is good and 5 is bad) and the word ‘effort’
wasn’t easy to translate into all languages. The latest version of the question (v2.0) is
a disagreement/agreement rating question “The organization made it easy for me to
handle my issue”. This question solves the scale issue and avoids using the word
“effort”. We prefer to keep the scales in the same order (from negative to positive), so
it avoids confusion among the respondents. So looking at it this way, CES 2.0 is a
welcome new version of CES!
Comparison CSAT, CES and NPS
In the table below we have summarized the key elements for each measurement
type to clarify the differences between the three satisfaction measures:
Customer
Customer Effort Score Net Promoter Score
Satisfaction
(CES) (NPS®)*
Score (CSAT)
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Question How would you The organization made it On a scale of 0-10 how
rate your easy for me to handle my likely would it be for you
experience with issue to recommend [company
your … (e.g. name] to a friend or
recent support colleague?
requirement)?
Scale Very Strongly disagree/ Scale from 0-10
unsatisfied / Disagree/ Somewhat
unsatisfied / disagree/ Neutral/
Neutral / Somewhat agree/
Satisfied / Very Agree/ Strongly agree
satisfied
The essential “Service organizations Customers are more
thought create loyal customers likely to share negative
behind this primarily by reducing experiences than positive
score customer effort – i.e. ones. By monitoring your
helping them solve their detractors and getting
problems quickly and them back on board of
easily – not by delighting passives or promoters,
them in service you can enhance your
interactions.” NPS score.
Method of CSAT score is After aggregating the The Net Promoter Score
measurement the sum of replies, a high average = % of promoters
respondents indicates that your (respondents that gave a
that answered company is making 9-10) – % of detractors
somewhat or things easy for your (respondents that gave a
very satisfied. customers. 0-6)
Obviously, the A very low number
higher the means that customers
number the are putting in too much
higher your effort to interact with your
customer company.
satisfaction will
be.
Applicability CSAT is versatile Easy to pin-point Able to measure the
because it actionable service customer’s opinion
allows you to improvement areas across channels, contact
ask customers a moments and
variety of experiences
questions
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Limitations Focusses on • Measurement is • As the question
specific limited to service is generic it is
interaction • CES can address not easy to pin-
(support event obstacles for point actionable
or product) and customer improvement
not on wider service, but areas unless you
relationship with doesn’t delve use an open
the company into why follow-up
customers have question
any issues in the • There is no
first place or proof your
what those promoters
obstacles may actually will
be recommend you
in real life
By comparing the different customer satisfaction measurements, we can
conclude that each has its own applicability, and limitations. These measurements
could stand on their own as a measurement tool for certain occasions, but can also
complement each other. For example, we could imagine a survey to measure the
satisfaction among attendees of a recent event you organized. When building a
feedback survey you could ask the respondent to fill out some Customer
Satisfaction scores (CSAT) split up into different areas of the event ( satisfaction
about content, timing, speakers quality, location, etc.). Additionally you could ask the
CES question to measure the efforts your customers needed to sign up for this
event. In the end of the survey you could ask how likely your customers are to
recommend your company based on this event experience.
NPS and CES are complementary measures
When comparing the NPS and CES score in particular, research shows that these
scores correlate with each other: customers that indicate they had to make little
efforts to fix a problem, also tend to give a high NPS. However, it is still worth using
both measurements in one survey. Whereas NPS gives you a picture of your
customer satisfaction on an overall level, your CES specifically indicates how you
perform in handling customer issues.
Using the measurement in practice
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What you need to keep in mind is that no single measurement can properly address
all of your company elements that influence customer satisfaction. You can
combine these customer satisfaction measurements and find out through
experimentation, what mix of measurements is the most effective for your company.
The high flexibility of the CheckMarket survey tool – which includes NPS as a pre-
programmed question and customer satisfaction survey templates with CSAT,
CES and NPS- allows you to easily blend these questions into an optimized survey
that serves your company best. In the end what truly matters is that the results of
these scores are transformed into actionable points for your company to work on. All
three measurement scores can help you with this, but they should always be
considered as a means to an end, the end being a higher customer satisfaction.
What do you think? Are you using the three measures in the same survey? What
are your experiences? Let us know here in the comments.
Want to start measuring NPS, CSAT or CES? Try our tool for free.
Related links
• Effectively measuring customer satisfaction? Ask the right questions!
• Client satisfaction
• Customer research
• Measuring customer satisfaction … the smart way
Net Promoter and NPS are registered service marks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter
System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.
5 comments
Join the conversation
Fred Van Bennekom - July, 2016 reply
I agree with Sven-Tore that NPS has never been validated by academic-
quality research, but it’s head and shoulders above the research behind CES.
That research is flawed on multiple levels: 1) They don’t measure actual
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loyalty as the outcome variable, only intended future loyalty. 2) The
questionnaire design and execution is weak. Notice they rewrote that awful
first version of the core question — but still want us to believe the research
findings from a question they say is invalid! 3) Statistics is not their strong suit.
They interpret statistics incorrectly.
I have a detailed review here: http://greatbrook.com/the-effortless-
experience-book-review/
Rebecca - June, 2016 reply
This blog post was really helpful! Especially the chart comparing the 3.
These 3 questions simplified the difference for me (pulled from this blog –
http://blog.capterra.com/what-are-ces-nps-and-csat-understanding-when-
to-use-which/):
CES: Asks the customer: “How much work did it take to get this thing done?”
NPS: Asks the customer: “How likely are you to recommend my brand to
someone else?”
CSAT: Asks the customer: “How good did that interaction feel to you?”
A Framework for Aspiring eCommerce Businesses - November, 2015
reply
[…] You should be accustomed to the NPS methodology. If you’re new to NPS,
take a moment to read about it here. There are many other methodologies
here,here, and here. […]
Sven-Tore Bengtsson - February, 2015 reply
I have some objections to the some part so the article.
The CSAT question is not just intended for single points of interactions but is
just as much a question to use to gauge the overall satisfaction with a
company. So the limitation you stated for CSAT is not really true.
In terms of the scale used for CSAT the ACSI (American customer satisfaction
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index), that can be seen as sort of the benchmark of CSAT surveys, is not 1-5
but 1-10 and each of the points don’t have labels, just the end points 1 and 10.
One can use 1-5, but a 1-5 scale is not recommended as you lose information
in the “neutral zone” of grad 3 and 1-5 don’t give you room for detecting
nuances. 1- 10 also have better properties for statistical analysis.
In the table. “The essential thought behind this score” is left blank? This seems
very strange, like if you are implying that there is no thought behind it or that
you can´t imagine what it is. I guess “To measure the level of customer
satisfaction” would be the idea behind the score of customer satisfaction.
The CSAT score is usually presented by a mean value or transformed into an
index value (as the ACSI) rather than looking at the percentage answering the
top two boxes as you have indicated under “Method of measurement”. One
again you can look at the ACSI for reference. But presenting is as the % in the
top two boxes is also quite common but just as a net score you lose
information when you don’t include the full scale (mean value captures the
full scale and all respondents).
Loyalty is the result you are after but when measuring loyalty bu asking
customers questions (not measuring behaviour) it has been shown in several
scientific robust scientific studies that overall satisfaction is actually better a
predicting loyalty behaviour and financial growth than a question of
recommendations. Some references to some of the scientific studies can be
found here: http://blog.verint.com/net-promoter-score-nps-criticisms-and-
best-practices.
The article in the link is a good read to get some insight into the many
shortcomings to NPS. To this date there is not a sigle scientific (peer
reviewed) study supporting that NPS predicts growth. The study that was
used to launch NPS in HBR is also flawed (and HBR is not a peer reviewed
magazine).
In many cases the act of recommending is not likely to drive new business or
just not relevant at all to ask. The NPS is also not suitable for measuring the
experience a customer have with a single touchpoint or a single transaction in
relationship covering multiple transactions (that’s advice straight from
Satmetrics)as NPS is constructed to measure the relationship as a whole.
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To answer Tiina Mobergs question, you can yes CES in the same survey as
CSAT and NPS. No problem, but try and use the same scale so you don´t
confuse the respondents.
Willem Schrijver - December, 2014 reply
Interesting feedback on Twitter from Tiina Moberg – Customer Experience
and Automation Director at TDC Oy:
“Good article! Just need to add that CES is often phrased easiness instead of
effort.”
It’s all about helping customers solve their problems quickly and easily –
which highly correlates with high customer satisfaction. It’s all about easiness.
Do you have any other experience with CES? And what about combining
them with CSAT and NPS: Can it be done?
Love to hear your feedback.
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