Definition
The Forrester Total Experience Score is a benchmark metric that combines a brand’s Brand Experience Index (BX Index) and Customer Experience Index (CX Index) into a single number on a 0–100 scale. It measures how well a company both wins new customers and serves the ones it already has, across the full customer lifecycle. Forrester launched it in June 2025 as part of its Global Total Experience Score Rankings.
What sets it apart from older experience metrics is scope. Most scores look at one side of the relationship — either how prospects perceive a brand before they buy, or how customers feel after they buy. The Total Experience Score looks at both at once. Half of it comes from how noncustomers see the brand, and the other half reflects the experience of actual customers, drawn from a mix of CX and BX data.
Forrester also positions a third index, the Employee Experience Index (EX Index), alongside the score. EX isn’t part of the headline number itself. Instead it sits in the surrounding “Total Experience” system as the workforce capability that determines whether a company can actually deliver on what it promises.
How it relates to marketing
For marketers, the score reframes a question that brand and CX teams have argued over for years: which one drives growth? Forrester’s answer is that neither does on its own. Improving customer experience alone is associated with roughly a 1.5x lift in revenue, and working only on the brand gets you about 1.6x. Aligning both is where the number jumps — up to 3.5x revenue growth, according to Forrester’s research.
That has a direct organizational consequence. Brand marketing and CX usually report to different leaders, run on different budgets, and measure success differently. A single composite score gives both teams one scoreboard. It also gives B2C marketing, digital, and CX leaders a shared benchmark for prioritizing where to spend — pre-purchase perception, post-purchase delivery, or the gap between the two.
How to calculate the Total Experience Score
The score isn’t something a company computes on its own. Forrester builds it from independently collected survey data and a proprietary algorithm, then publishes it as an annual benchmark. The structure of the calculation, though, is public.
The score splits in half:
- Half comes from the noncustomer BX Index — how people who are aware of a brand, but don’t buy from it, perceive that brand.
- The other half comes from a combination of the customer BX Index and the CX Index — how existing customers perceive the brand and rate their actual experiences.
Each underlying index has its own method. The BX Index surveys both noncustomers and customers who are aware of a brand in a given industry, scoring perceptions through drivers like salience, fit, and trust. The CX Index surveys only people who’ve directly interacted with a brand in the past 12 months, measuring how effective, easy, and emotionally resonant those interactions felt. Forrester runs its algorithm on each respondent’s answers, averages the scores per brand, and combines them into the final 0–100 figure.
A few methodology details matter for anyone citing the rankings. Respondents who qualify for several brands in an industry get randomly assigned to just one, so no single person rates the whole category. The sample is nationally representative in each market. And companies can’t pay to be included, excluded, or scored more favorably — Forrester sources its own respondents rather than using customer lists supplied by the brands being measured.
For the 2026 rankings, Forrester analyzed 406 brands across 11 industries and 13 countries using more than 350,000 consumer perceptions. The 2025 launch covered 413 brands and over 360,000 consumers.
How to utilize the Total Experience Score
Forrester describes the score as a decision tool, not just a report card. The data and the diagnostics behind it are available through Forrester Decisions research services for CX, B2C marketing, and digital business and strategy leaders. Here’s where teams actually put it to work.
Benchmarking against competitors. The annual rankings let a brand see where it sits inside its industry and country, not in the abstract but against named peers. In the 2026 US rankings, USAA topped the list as a bank with a Total Experience Score of 69.0.
Diagnosing the brand-to-experience gap. Because the score separates noncustomer perception from customer experience, it surfaces mismatches. A brand can score high with the people it already serves and low with the market it needs to reach next — or the reverse. Forrester found 18 European brands in 2025 that scored more than twice as high with their own customers as with noncustomers.
Mapping position on the Growth Grid. The Growth Grid plots the noncustomer (winning) and customer (serving) components on two axes and drops a brand into one of four states:
- Leading — strong at both winning and serving.
- Plateauing — loved by current customers but invisible to the next ones.
- Churning — good at generating demand, weak at turning it into lasting relationships.
- Lagging — struggling on both fronts.
That placement tells a team where to aim. A plateauing brand needs acquisition and awareness work; a churning brand needs to fix delivery and retention.
Aligning teams and budgets. Marketing, CX, and digital can argue endlessly about whose work moves the needle. A composite score gives them one shared target and makes the tradeoffs visible — which is often the real value for the people who have to defend a CX budget internally.
Even companies without a Forrester subscription can borrow the logic. The underlying idea — measure brand perception and lived experience together rather than in separate silos — transfers to internal metrics most organizations already collect.
Comparison to similar metrics
The Total Experience Score competes with several established experience and loyalty measures. The differences come down to what each one measures and who it surveys.
| Metric | What it measures | Who’s surveyed | Scale | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forrester Total Experience Score | Brand perception + customer experience combined, across the lifecycle | Customers and noncustomers | 0–100 | Forrester |
| Forrester CX Index | Quality of customer experience (effectiveness, ease, emotion) | Recent customers only | 0–100 | Forrester |
| Forrester BX Index | Strength of brand perception (salience, fit, trust) | Customers and noncustomers | 0–100 | Forrester |
| Net Promoter Score (NPS) | Likelihood to recommend | Customers | −100 to +100 | Bain / Reichheld |
| Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) | Satisfaction with a specific interaction | Customers | Usually 1–5 or % | Generic |
| Customer Effort Score (CES) | Ease of completing a task | Customers | Typically 1–7 | Generic |
The pattern is clear once you line them up. NPS, CSAT, and CES all sample existing customers and capture a slice of the post-purchase relationship. Forrester’s CX Index does the same with more rigor. The Total Experience Score is the outlier — it’s the one that brings noncustomers into the math and ties pre-purchase brand perception to post-purchase experience in a single figure.
Best practices
Don’t treat it as a vanity number. A high score is easy to celebrate and easy to misread. The point of the metric is the diagnosis underneath — which component is dragging, and why — not the headline figure on a slide.
Read the two halves separately before you read the total. A composite can hide a lopsided story. Pull apart the noncustomer and customer components first, because a strong overall score can mask weakness on the side you most need to fix.
Use the Growth Grid to pick a focus, not to label yourself. Knowing you’re “plateauing” only helps if it changes where the next dollar goes. Tie the grid position to a specific acquisition or retention initiative.
Pair it with operational metrics you control. Forrester’s benchmark arrives once a year and is built from outside survey data. Connect it to internal signals — churn, CSAT, journey analytics — so you’re not flying blind between updates.
Don’t let the benchmark become the goal. Optimizing for a single Forrester number can pull attention away from the actual experience. The score is a guide to where growth comes from, not a substitute for the work.
Future trends
Expect the Employee Experience Index to move closer to the center of the story. Forrester already frames EX as the capability that makes brand and customer experience deliverable, and its 2026 commentary leans harder on orchestrating BX, CX, and EX as one system rather than three. Whether EX eventually folds into the headline score is an open question, but the narrative is heading that way.
Year-over-year movement will also matter more as the benchmark matures. The 2026 rankings could compare 375 brands that were measured in both years — 41% improved, only 3% declined — which is the kind of trend data that turns a static score into a tracking tool. Regional divergence is becoming part of the analysis too: in 2026, US gains came more from noncustomers while Canadian gains came more from existing customers, the same upward movement driven by different dynamics.
And because the score is proprietary and subscription-gated, watch for the broader market to adopt the concept faster than the metric itself. The idea that brand and experience should be measured together, not in separate silos, is portable. Plenty of teams will rebuild that logic with their own data long before they buy a Forrester seat.
FAQs
What is the Forrester Total Experience Score? It’s a benchmark metric, scored 0–100, that combines a brand’s Brand Experience Index and Customer Experience Index into one number reflecting how well a company wins new customers and serves existing ones across the full lifecycle. Forrester introduced it in June 2025.
How is the score calculated? Half comes from the noncustomer BX Index, and the other half from a combination of the customer BX Index and the CX Index. Forrester collects the survey data, applies its proprietary algorithms, averages results per brand, and publishes the composite as an annual benchmark.
What’s the difference between the Total Experience Score and the CX Index? The CX Index measures only the experience of recent customers. The Total Experience Score adds noncustomer brand perception, so it captures both the pre-purchase and post-purchase sides of the relationship in one figure.
Does the Employee Experience Index factor into the score? Not directly. The EX Index sits alongside the score as part of Forrester’s wider Total Experience system, measuring the workforce capability behind delivery. It’s reported as a separate impact category — positive, neutral, or negative — rather than baked into the headline number.
Can a company pay to improve its score? No. Forrester maintains control over which brands, industries, and markets are measured. Companies can’t pay to be included, excluded, or given favorable results, and Forrester sources its own nationally representative respondents instead of using company-supplied customer lists.
What is the Growth Grid? It’s a diagnostic that plots a brand’s noncustomer (winning) and customer (serving) scores on two axes, sorting brands into leading, plateauing, churning, or lagging. The placement points teams toward whether they need to fix acquisition, retention, or both.
Why does aligning brand and customer experience matter so much? Forrester’s research links CX improvements alone to roughly 1.5x revenue growth and brand work alone to about 1.6x. Aligning both is associated with up to 3.5x growth — the gap is the whole argument for measuring them together.
How can I access the data? Through Forrester Decisions research services for customer experience, B2C marketing, and digital business and strategy leaders. The rankings and diagnostics require a client subscription.
How many brands does the ranking cover? The 2026 rankings looked at 406 brands across 11 industries and 13 countries, using more than 350,000 consumer perceptions. The 2025 launch covered 413 brands and over 360,000 consumers.
Related Terms
- Brand Experience Index (BX Index)
- Customer Experience Index (CX Index)
- Employee Experience Index (EX Index)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
- Customer Effort Score (CES)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Voice of the Customer (VoC)
- Customer Journey Mapping
- Brand Equity
Sources
- Forrester — Total Experience Score (research overview): https://www.forrester.com/research/total-experience-score/
- Forrester Methodologies: Total Experience: https://www.forrester.com/policies/total-experience/
- Forrester Press Release — “Forrester Introduces The Total Experience Score” (June 24, 2025): https://www.forrester.com/press-newsroom/forrester-total-experience-score-2025-rankings/
- Forrester Blog — “Total Experience Score, 2026: Growth Breaks When Experiences Fragment”: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/total-experience-score-2026-growth-breaks-when-experiences-fragment/
- Forrester — Global Total Experience Score Rankings, 2025 (report): https://www.forrester.com/report/forresters-global-total-experience-score-rankings-2025/RES184178
- The Agile Brand Guide — “Forrester Introduces The Total Experience Score” (news coverage): https://agilebrandguide.com/forrester-introduces-the-total-experience-score-a-new-metric-for-measuring-the-power-of-a-unified-brand-and-customer-experience/