Customer effort is no longer a new concept, but I believe with a firm conviction that it remains one of the most consistently underestimated drivers of customer satisfaction. Over more than a decade working in customer experience, one pattern has appeared time and again - when services feel hard work, trust erodes quickly. When they feel easy, satisfaction follows.
Our latest analysis reinforces this truth with striking clarity. It shows that customer effort is not a marginal issue affecting a vocal minority, but a structural feature of the tenant experience. One in six tenants are expending unnecessary effort simply to get basic issues resolved. That effort shows up as waiting, chasing, re‑explaining, interpreting unclear information, or, in some cases, physically intervening themselves.
This blog brings together insights from our recent report, supporting webinar, and earlier research into customer effort. It combines large‑scale data analysis with established CX theory to explain why effort matters, how it manifests for customers, and why reducing it is one of the fastest and most effective ways to improve satisfaction.
At its core, customer effort refers to how hard customers feel they have to work to get their issues resolved. Academic research increasingly recognises effort as a stronger predictor of satisfaction and loyalty than moments of delight. As Dixon, Freeman and Toman famously argued in Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers, customers value ease and resolution far more than exceptional, but more effortful experiences.
From a measurement perspective, customer effort captures something traditional satisfaction scores often miss: the actual process and not just the outcome. Two tenants may receive the same repair, but if one waited months, chased repeatedly, and navigated unclear communication, I guarantee that they will report a very different experience.
From a customer experience standpoint, effort is one of the strongest predictors of overall satisfaction. The fact is that when something feels easy, people feel positive, confident, and reassured. When it feels hard, frustration increases rapidly and trust deteriorates.
High effort also carries tangible operational consequences:
Increased repeat contact and chasing.
Higher complaint volumes.
Greater pressure on frontline teams.
Declining TSM scores over time.
Our experience consistently shows a clear relationship between perceived ease of service and overall satisfaction. Where landlords ask tenants how easy they are to deal with, ease scores and TSM outcomes move together. As effort increases, satisfaction falls.
Customer effort is now supported by a substantial and growing body of academic research. For this analysis, we adopted the Clark & Bryan framework, which breaks effort into four distinct but related types:
Time‑based effort: waiting, delays, repeated contact, chasing progress
Cognitive effort: interpreting unclear letters, understanding processes, navigating systems
Emotional effort: stress, anxiety, feeling ignored or dismissed
Physical effort: taking action in person or intervening physically due to service failure
Analysing tenant verbatim through this lens allows us to move beyond a single effort score and understand where and how friction is occurring in the journey.
The findings are unambiguous.
The Ease/Effort category holds an overall negative sentiment score of 29, with TSM scores declining across all effort themes compared to the previous period. The reality is that effort is not improving; in many areas it is worsening.
Time‑based effort is by far the most significant contributor:
55% of all effort‑related comments relate to time‑based issues
Long waits, long calls, and repeated chasing dominate tenant feedback
The greatest source of frustration is the gap between reporting an issue and seeing meaningful progress or resolution. For many tenants, the problem is not that nothing eventually happens, but that too much time and effort is required along the way.
Cognitive effort (27% of comments) arises from unclear letters, contradictory information, and complex processes.
Emotional effort (26% of comments) reflects stress, anxiety, and feeling unheard, often amplified for vulnerable tenants.
Physical effort (4% of comments), while smaller in volume, includes serious cases where tenants must attend offices, repeatedly call, or take action themselves due to service failure.
Together, these forms of effort paint a picture of friction that is embedded in everyday service delivery.
Tenant verbatim brings the data to life. Across effort themes, feedback repeatedly highlights:
Long delays in repairs, sometimes stretching into months or years.
Difficulty getting through on the phone.
Conflicting or unclear information.
Reopened complaints and stalled ASB cases.
These experiences create a cumulative effort. Each additional delay, call, or clarification compounds frustration and erodes trust.
Despite the scale of the issue, there is good news. The reality is that effort is one of the quickest aspects of the tenant experience to improve, and it rarely requires large capital investment. However, what it does require is:
Clarity: clear communication, consistent messages, transparent expectations.
Communication: proactive updates that reduce waiting and chasing.
Consistency: reliable follow through so tenants do not need to re‑engage.
Reducing waiting through proactive updates can halve perceived effort. Improving the clarity of letters and texts immediately lowers cognitive effort. Supporting vulnerable tenants reduces emotional and physical effort, with a disproportionate impact on trust.
Crucially, organisations that track effort themes and not just effort scores, can pinpoint friction points in the journey and redesign services accordingly.
Customer effort is like an invisible tax tenants pay for poor systems and processes. When that tax is high, satisfaction, trust, and confidence all decline. What this analysis shows is that removing unnecessary effort creates a genuine win‑win. Life becomes easier for tenants, and it becomes easier for frontline teams too. Fewer repeat contacts, less chasing, fewer complaints, and services that feel more human.
In customer experience, great service is rarely about doing more. More often, it is about making things effortless.
P.S. The findings in this piece come from our TSM benchmark report — 135,000+ anonymised comments across 18 housing associations. Download the full report and data here or watch the webinar if you want to see the complete picture.