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 Score^SM (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 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:

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

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.

Related links

• Effectively measuring customer satisfaction? Ask the right questions!
• Customer Satisfaction Software
• Customer research
• Net Promotor Score Software

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.