Latest / Customer Journey with Fexingo: Touchpoints, Mapping, and Multi-Channel Marketing / The One Metric That Predicts Customer Loyalty Better Than NPS
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a metric that predicts whether a customer will buy from you again — and it's not satisfaction. It's not even NPS. It's something simpler called the Customer Effort Score. Luna: Customer Effort Score — CES for short. I've seen this pop up more in CX circles, but I don't think most marketers actually use it day to day. Lucas: They don't. And that's a missed opportunity, because the data is pretty striking. A Harvard Business Review study from a few years back looked at tens of thousands of customer interactions and found that ninety-four percent of customers who had a low-effort experience said they would buy from the company again. Luna: Versus what, for high-effort? Lucas: Four percent. Ninety-four versus four. That's not a small gap. And the same study found that customers who had to put in high effort — think having to call multiple times, repeat their story, navigate a terrible website — those customers were actually more likely to tell others about their bad experience than customers who were just unsatisfied. Luna: So effort is a bigger driver of word of mouth than satisfaction itself. That changes how you think about where to invest. Lucas: Exactly. Most companies pour money into making customers happy — freebies, upgrades, loyalty programs. But if the basic interaction to get a problem solved is painful, none of that matters. The customer is already gone. Luna: Let's talk about a company that gets this right. Amazon is the obvious one — one-click ordering, automatic refunds, the 'call me' button instead of waiting on hold. They've basically engineered effort out of every touchpoint. Lucas: Amazon is the gold standard, but it's not just e-commerce. Delta Airlines invested heavily in making its baggage claim process effortless — you can track your bag in the app, and if it's delayed, they deliver it to your door. That's a high-effort moment — lost luggage — turned into a low-effort one. Luna: And they probably saved on call center costs too, because fewer people call to ask 'where's my bag?' Lucas: That's the hidden ROI. Reducing effort often reduces operational cost. A telecom company I worked with found that their biggest customer effort spike was when someone had to call to change their plan. The average handle time was twelve minutes, and the rep often couldn't even do it — they had to transfer to a specialist. Luna: So what did they do? Lucas: They built a self-service flow in the app that let customers change their plan in about forty seconds. They also added a callback option so if someone did call, they didn't have to wait. Within six months, call volume for plan changes dropped by sixty percent, and the customer effort score for that touchpoint went from about a seven out of seven — high effort — down to a two. Luna: Seven being worst, one being best. Lucas: Right. CES is usually measured on a scale from one — very low effort — to seven — very high effort. You want scores as low as possible. Anything above a three is a red flag. Luna: Before we go too deep into the mechanics — Lucas, I think this is actually a good moment to mention something. If this kind of thinking is useful to you, the reason we can keep having these conversations without ads is that listeners support the show. Lucas: It's true. We don't run sponsor spots, we don't sell your data, and we don't have a premium tier. The whole thing stays free because people who get value from it chip in a few bucks. If you've ever applied a framework from this show or changed something in your own marketing, consider heading to buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Even five dollars makes a difference. And it keeps the podcast exactly what it is right now. Okay, back to effort scores. Lucas: So the obvious question is: how do you actually measure this? You can add a single question to your post-interaction survey: 'How much effort did you have to put in to resolve your issue?' on that one-to-seven scale. That's it. You don't need a PhD in statistics. Luna: But measurement is only half the battle. The hard part is figuring out which touchpoints are causing the most effort. Lucas: Right. A practical way to start is to look at your top five reasons customers contact support. Those are your highest-effort moments by definition — because the customer had to reach out. Then map each one against the current resolution path. How many clicks? How many transfers? Does the customer have to repeat information? Luna: And then ask: can we eliminate the need to contact us at all? That's the dream — the zero-effort interaction. Lucas: Sometimes the answer is yes. A SaaS company I know had a really complicated password reset process. Users had to email support, get a link, answer security questions. They switched to a biometric login — fingerprint on mobile. Password resets dropped to nearly zero. Effort score went from a six to a one. Luna: But there is a tension here. If you make everything too frictionless, do you lose the opportunity to build emotional connection? Like, a handwritten thank-you note is high effort for the company, but it creates delight. Lucas: That's the nuance. You want to reduce effort on problem-resolution touchpoints — the moments where the customer is trying to accomplish a task. Those should be as easy as possible. But on marketing or relationship-building touchpoints, some effort can actually increase perceived value. Think of onboarding — a little guided effort helps customers learn your product better. Luna: So the key is knowing which type of touchpoint you're dealing with. Is it a 'get it done' moment or a 'feel good' moment? Lucas: Exactly. And the mistake most companies make is treating all touchpoints the same. They add a chatbot to everything, or they automate every email, and they end up making the feel-good moments feel robotic. Luna: Give me an example of a company that overlapped the two poorly. Lucas: A hotel chain I stayed at recently sent a pre-arrival email that was clearly automated. It said 'We hope you enjoy your stay!' but then it asked me to upgrade my room for an extra fee. That's a feel-good moment — anticipation of a trip — turned into a transactional ask. It felt high effort even though it was just one click, because it broke the emotional tone. Luna: So effort is not just about clicks or minutes. It's also about cognitive load — how much thinking the customer has to do. Lucas: That's a great way to put it. The HBR study actually defined effort across three dimensions: the time it took, the mental energy required, and the emotional hassle. Most companies only look at time. Luna: Let's zoom out. If a marketer wants to start using CES tomorrow, what's the simplest first step? Lucas: Pick the single most common customer-support interaction you have. Add the CES question to your post-interaction survey for that interaction. Measure the current score. Then brainstorm three ways to reduce the effort — not to improve satisfaction, not to make it more delightful, just to make it easier. Implement one change, remeasure, and see if the score drops. Luna: A low-cost experiment that's directly tied to a metric. I like that. Lucas: And if the score drops, you'll almost certainly see a lift in repeat purchase and a drop in negative word of mouth. That's the whole thesis. Luna: One last thought. I wonder if the rise of AI agents will eventually make customer effort scores obsolete — because the effort becomes zero for most interactions. Lucas: Maybe. But even AI agents can create effort if they misunderstand the query or force the customer into an endless loop. I think CES will evolve, but the concept — measuring how hard the customer had to work — will stay relevant as long as there are, you know, customers. Luna: Fair point. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thank you, Luna. That's our show for today.