Understanding the Big Three: NPS, CSAT, and CES

Customer experience is more critical than ever before in today’s competitive marketplace. Understanding how customers feel about your products, services, and overall brand is key to staying ahead. To help measure these feelings and guide business decisions, organisations often rely on metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES). While all three are customer experience (CX) metrics, they are used in different ways and offer distinct insights into a customer’s relationship with your business.

In this blog post, we will compare and contrast these three customer experience metrics—explaining when each should be used, exploring their advantages and disadvantages, analysing when and why each can be useful, and identifying ways to enhance their effectiveness or combine them for a more comprehensive understanding of the customer experience.

The Basics: NPS, CSAT, and CES

Before diving into the nuances of each metric, let’s briefly describe what they are and how they are typically measured:

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a metric used to gauge customer loyalty based on their likelihood to recommend your product or service to others. It is typically measured with the question: "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend [brand/product/service] to a friend or colleague?"

• Promoters (score 9-10): Customers who are highly satisfied and loyal to your brand, likely to recommend you.
• Passives (score 7-8): Customers who are satisfied but not enthusiastic; unlikely to actively promote or detract.
• Detractors (score 0-6): Customers who are unhappy and might actively discourage others from engaging with your brand.

The NPS score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. NPS provides a high-level view of customer loyalty, which can correlate to repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

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CSAT is a metric that evaluates a customer’s satisfaction with a specific interaction, product, or service. It typically involves a short survey question like: "How satisfied were you with your recent experience?" The response scale usually ranges from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied), but some organisations use a different scale.

CSAT is highly focused on individual experiences or touchpoints, such as a purchase, a customer service interaction, or the completion of a specific task.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

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CES measures how much effort a customer needs to put in to achieve a desired outcome with your product, service, or interaction. This metric has gained attention recently because reducing customer effort has been found to have a significant impact on customer loyalty. The typical question for CES is: "How much effort did you personally have to put forth to resolve your issue today?" The response scale usually ranges from "Very low effort" to "Very high effort."

CES is often used in contexts like customer support, onboarding, or when customers are interacting with complex processes or systems.

When to Use NPS, CSAT, and CES

Each of these metrics has its strengths and is best suited for different stages of the customer journey or specific business goals. Let’s break down when and why each metric should be used:

1. NPS: Measuring Customer Loyalty Over Time

When to Use:

• Overall Customer Loyalty: NPS is ideal for measuring long-term loyalty and brand advocacy. If you want to understand the overall health of your customer base and predict future business growth, NPS is the metric to use. It’s useful after major product releases, at regular intervals to track customer sentiment over time, or after an interaction that’s intended to create lasting impressions.
• Customer Sentiment at Scale: NPS is typically surveyed once a quarter or annually to understand the loyalty of your entire customer base, as opposed to specific touchpoints or experiences.

Why It’s Useful:

• Simplicity: NPS is easy to understand and implement. It only requires one question and a simple calculation to derive the score, making it accessible for companies of any size.
• Predictive Power: Research has shown that NPS is a strong predictor of customer retention, repeat business, and organic growth. Loyal customers (promoters) can help drive revenue through positive word of mouth and referrals.

Disadvantages:

• Subjectivity: A score of 8 or 9 doesn’t provide the full context. A promoter might still have concerns or issues that can impact future loyalty, and detractors might have isolated negative experiences that don't reflect the overall brand experience.
• Limited Insight: NPS measures the likelihood of recommending, but it doesn’t provide details on what exactly caused customers to feel loyal or dissatisfied. Without follow-up questions, NPS can lack actionable insights into the drivers of loyalty.

2. CSAT: Measuring Satisfaction with Specific Interactions

When to Use:

• Post-Transaction or Post-Interaction Feedback: CSAT is perfect for capturing feedback about specific customer experiences. Whether a customer has interacted with customer service, made a purchase, or used your product, CSAT is a great way to understand their satisfaction after those individual touchpoints.
• Short-Term Feedback: Use CSAT to measure satisfaction immediately following a touchpoint, such as a customer support call, an online purchase, or after resolving a technical issue. It provides actionable, real-time data.

Why It’s Useful:

• Actionable Data: CSAT is a highly actionable metric. If a customer is dissatisfied with a particular interaction or service, you can use their response to directly address the issue (e.g., providing better support training or adjusting product features).
• Granular Insights: Since CSAT surveys are focused on individual experiences, it allows for targeted improvements. It helps you identify specific touchpoints or processes that need attention.

Disadvantages:

• Limited Scope: CSAT only reflects how satisfied customers were with a specific experience. It doesn’t provide insight into long-term loyalty or the broader customer relationship.
• Doesn’t Predict Loyalty: A customer can be satisfied with an individual experience but still churn for reasons unrelated to that particular interaction. CSAT does not correlate directly with customer retention or brand advocacy, unlike NPS.

3. CES: Measuring Customer Effort to Resolve Issues

When to Use:

• Customer Support and Service Recovery: CES is widely used after customer service or support interactions. If a customer has to exert significant effort to resolve an issue—be it navigating a complex website, dealing with a confusing customer service process, or troubleshooting a product—CES will help capture that experience.
• Product or Service Onboarding: CES can be effective in understanding how easy or difficult it is for customers to get started with a product or service. A high CES score may signal that the onboarding process needs improvement.

Why It’s Useful:

• Strong Correlation with Loyalty: Studies have shown that reducing customer effort leads to stronger customer retention and loyalty. A low effort interaction is more likely to result in a loyal customer, even if they weren’t initially delighted.
• Focused on Process Improvement: CES helps identify friction points within the customer experience, specifically how easy or difficult it is for customers to achieve their goals. This is important because reducing friction can result in higher satisfaction and more loyal customers.

Disadvantages:

• Limited to Specific Interactions: CES is most useful in contexts where the customer has to exert effort (like support). It doesn’t provide insights into broader aspects of the customer relationship or long-term brand loyalty.
• Doesn’t Capture Emotions or Satisfaction: CES is purely focused on effort and doesn’t directly capture emotional aspects of the customer experience, like delight or frustration. A low-effort experience might still leave a customer feeling unsatisfied or indifferent.

Comparing the Metrics

Now that we’ve outlined when and why each metric is useful, let’s compare them across several dimensions:

Making Each Metric More Useful or Complementary

While each of these metrics has its limitations, there are ways to enhance their value and make them even more useful. In fact, using them in combination can offer a more comprehensive view of customer experience. Here’s how:

1. Combine NPS, CSAT, and CES

Instead of using each metric in isolation, combine them for a more well-rounded customer experience analysis. For example, after measuring CES for a support interaction, follow up with an NPS question to understand the long-term impact of that interaction on customer loyalty. Or, after gathering CSAT feedback from a specific interaction, use NPS to gauge overall brand loyalty.

2. Ask Follow-Up Questions

To overcome the lack of detail in NPS and CES, ask open-ended follow-up questions. For instance, if a customer gives a low CES score, ask “What could we have done to make the process easier?” If a customer gives a low NPS score, ask “What would have made you more likely to recommend our brand?” These insights can guide improvements.

3. Track Metrics Across the Entire Customer Journey

Using a combination of metrics throughout the customer lifecycle—CES for onboarding, CSAT for specific touchpoints, and NPS for overall loyalty—will help you understand the complete customer experience. This allows businesses to focus on reducing friction at critical moments while improving satisfaction at key touchpoints.

Conclusion

Each of the three customer experience metrics—NPS, CSAT, and CES—serves a unique purpose and offers distinct insights into different aspects of customer experience. NPS measures overall brand loyalty and advocacy, CSAT captures satisfaction with specific interactions, and CES focuses on reducing friction and effort in customer interactions.

To get the most out of these metrics, companies should combine them thoughtfully depending on their business goals, context, and stage of the customer journey. By doing so, they can ensure that their customer experience strategy is well-rounded, actionable, and aligned with long-term success.