Total Experience

Forrester has assessed CX quality since 2006 and expanded this approach to include brand experience — and now the influence of employee experience — creating a more complete view of growth.

• Pre-purchase: how your brand is perceived by prospective customers
• Post-purchase: how customers perceive their experience and how likely they are to stay, expand their relationship with your brand, and advocate for it

Most other metrics focus on either pre-purchase brand perception or post-purchase customer experience. Forrester’s Total Experience Score is the first of its kind to bring brand and customer experience together — and reveal the role employee experience plays in driving results — across the full customer lifecycle.

Other tools consist of a single metric or are focused on just one moment in time. But the Total Experience Score provides granular, in-depth analysis on drivers collected over time so you can identify and prioritize the biggest improvements that will move the revenue needle the most.

These scores are then translated into customer and noncustomer perspectives and plotted on Forrester’s growth grid to show where an organization has the greatest opportunity to drive growth.

The EX Index does not contribute to the Total Experience Score directly. Instead, it is used to assign an EX Impact category — positive, neutral, or negative — indicating whether an organization’s employee experience will help or hinder its ability to maintain or improve its growth position.

To determine each score, Forrester rigorously analyzes thousands of data points from more than 350,000 customers and noncustomers of more than 400 brands across 13 countries and 11 industries.

Algorithms Weighted By Industry And Geography

The Total Experience Score, BX Index, CX Index, and EX Index are calculated using Forrester’s proprietary algorithms. These models weight inputs based on industry dynamics and the influence of brand perception, customer experience, and employee sentiment on outcomes. The BX Index accounts for differences between customer and noncustomer respondents. The CX Index weights experience drivers based on their impact on loyalty by industry and market. The EX Index applies a weighted model across employee sentiment dimensions to assess workforce impact relative to industry peers.

The Employee Experience (EX) Index

The indicators from the EX Index do not contribute to the quantified score, but they give a data-informed indication of how well an organization empowers, enables, and inspires employees relative to peer organizations.

Total Experience combines Forrester’s Brand Experience Index (BX Index™), Customer Experience Index (CX Index™), and Employee Experience Index (EX Index™) into a unified growth system. The score reflects combined BX and CX performance, with EX insights that reveal how well organizations can deliver and sustain those experiences.”

The BX, CX, and EX Indexes measure performance in each area individually.

The Total Experience Score brings these together into a single, connected view — showing not only how you perform but how those experiences work together to drive growth.

It also introduces EX impact, helping you understand whether employee experience is accelerating or limiting your ability to deliver strong brand and customer outcomes.

No. The Total Experience Score builds on the CX and BX Indexes.

It brings them together into a unified growth lens and adds employee experience insights to show how effectively your organization can execute on your brand and customer strategies.

Employees are the ones who deliver customer experiences and bring brand promises to life.

When employees are empowered, enabled, and inspired, organizations can:

• Deliver more consistent customer experiences.
• Execute on brand promises more effectively.
• Adapt and innovate to meet changing customer expectations.

When employee experience is weak, even strong brand and customer strategies become harder to execute — making growth more difficult to achieve and sustain.

The EX Index measures how well an organization empowers, enables, and inspires its employees.

When paired with the Total Experience Score, it reveals the impact of employee experience on growth, helping you understand:

• Whether your workforce is equipped to deliver strong experiences.
• The level of performance that your organization can realistically achieve.
• Where workforce gaps may be limiting results.

The Total Experience research helps organizations:

• Align marketing, CX, digital, and business teams around a shared view of growth.
• Identify the drivers that will have the greatest impact on performance.
• Diagnose gaps between brand promise, customer experience, and execution.
• Prioritize investments that improve outcomes and accelerate growth.

Even if your organization is not included, Total Experience research provides valuable insights into industry dynamics, benchmarks, and drivers of growth.

Organizations can also work with Forrester to conduct a custom analysis tailored to their brand.