When customers have to jump through hoops to do business with a company, customer effort rises and loyalty plummets. If you want loyalty from customers, make it easy. The more convenient a customer’s experience, the more they want to do business with you.

That’s the premise behind the Customer Effort Score (CES), a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures how much effort your customers put into getting an issue resolved or obtaining a service with a business. In a Harvard Business Review study, 94 percent of customers reporting “low effort” said they would repurchase, while 88 percent said they would increase their spending. It’s also a strong predictor of referral likelihood, as 81 percent of customers reporting “high effort” say they would speak negatively about the company to others.

The Customer Experience Board surveyed 97,000 customers and found that simply exceeding customer expectations isn’t enough. What really impacts customer loyalty numbers is minimal customer effort.

Today’s leading brands have engrained sophisticated technology, such as voice recognition, and everyday conveniences, like tap to pay, to the extent that it has become business as usual. Lyft and Uber users open the app, put in their destination of choice, are provided with a price and, typically, are in their ride within a few minutes. The entire process is simple, transparent and, most importantly, effortless.

So, how can the automotive industry begin to move faster toward multichannel experiences that are very low effort for the customer? In a survey comprised of over 75,000 customers, the No. 1 most important factor that determined loyalty is reducing customer efforts. Don’t make customers jump through hoops to do business with you. 

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