How we measure Customer Satisfaction? Introducing CES
How we measure Customer Satisfaction? Introducing CES
Document updated on 2022/04/28
Feedback is a key process for Corbis. We need to know if what we deliver as a service is valued by our Clients. Getting positive feedback is one of the drivers for making our business sustainable.
After some time using a CSAT approach, we decided to change in 2022 to a different methodology and concept: the Customer Effort Score (CES).
CES is a methodology used mainly in B2B and transactional processes. In 2010, researchers found that reducing the amount of effort a customer has to do to get their problem solved is a higher indicator of customer loyalty than delight (you can check that article clicking here). Also according to the research published in the book the Effortless Experience, “96% of customers with a high-effort service interaction become more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience”.
We noticed by the end of 2021 we were getting low response rates for our surveys and also that the information we were gathering from them was not helpful for understanding exactly if we were reaching Clients expectations or not. So, we decided to analyze what was going on, review and destroy the process (by applying Flip or Flop) and we came up with a totally new methodology and approach.
CES establishes that customers should respond to an affirmation related with the effort they had to do to resolve certain concern. In our case we ask if it was easy to choose us or interact with us, which is a way to refer to the effort made. Customers respond using a 7 points scale:
We look for scores that are 5 (Somewhat Agree) or better. For calculation of the final score, we add up the scores and we divide by the number of answers obtained. For example: we got two 7's a 6 and two 5's in 5 surveys. Therefore, the CES will be: 30/5 = 6
We survey the Clients in 3 different stages. The first stage is related to BDS, the rest are related to OPS. Therefore the Scores (which we call Corbis Reputation) obtained impact both areas separately. In the case of the BDS (Proposal Stage) we request to qualify only one CES related statement and we open space for additional comments. On the OPS stages (Partial Delivery and Wrap Up), we ask Clients to qualify a CES related statement that is the one that counts for the Score, a statement related to Quality and two more that (along with the first one) are intended to check if we fulfill our objective for Customer Value. Statements 2, 3 and 4 (Quality and Customer Value) DO NOT affect the Score but is information we need to make decisions if needed.
Below you can find the detail of the Surveys
Proposal Stage
When a proposal is approved by the Client and turns into a new project, we send a survey asking about the sales process. An email is sent to the contacts we had on the sales process, and we ask the following:
Partial Delivery
Every time we do a Partial Delivery (if applies) we send a survey with the following content:
Wrap Up
When we close a project, we send the following survey
We hope this information is helpful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact P&P at support@frankcollaboration.com