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The most important metric: Customer Effort Score
Stephane Gonthier explains why CSAT plateaus and how Customer Effort Score gives support leaders an actionable signal directly tied to retention and revenue.

with Stephane Gonthier, Former Global Head of Support at Acquia

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49:41
Introduction
Most support teams sit at 90%+ CSAT and have no idea what to do next — the metric has flattered them into a dead end. After 24 years in support, Stephane Gonthier found his way out with Customer Effort Score.
He details the exact question his team asked, the follow-up prompts that multiplied written feedback, and how bucketing responses into themes — resolution time, communication, product gaps, tooling — turned a survey into a prioritised improvement roadmap. Best of all, effort correlates with renewal and expansion, which makes it the rare support metric executives lean into.
What you will learn in this episode
Why CSAT stops being actionable once you pass 90%
How to phrase the CES question and its follow-ups for maximum signal
Turning free-text responses into a themed improvement backlog
Connecting effort scores to retention, expansion and executive buy-in
Benchmarks: useful as a starting point, dangerous as a finish line
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