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Total Experience Score

Brand. Customer. One Powerful Measure.

 

Your brand leaves an indelible mark that persists even as shoppers become buyers and move through the customer lifecycle. We know a strong brand experience (BX) and a strong customer experience (CX) each drive revenue independently. Yet when they work in harmony, the impact multiplies.

  • Improving CX alone can lead to a 1.5x revenue lift.
  • Improving BX on its own can create a 1.6x revenue lift.
  • But when companies improve both brand equity and CX together, the revenue lift reaches 3.5x.

 

That’s the power of alignment — and the reason we created the Total Experience Score.

Developed by Forrester, the Total Experience Score is the first unified metric that reflects the combined impact of our Brand Experience Index (BX Index™) and Customer Experience Index (CX Index™). You gain a complete, connected view of how well your company wins and serves customers — across the entire lifecycle.

Win And Serve Customers Across The Full Lifecycle

The Total Experience Score empowers your brand and CX teams to work in true alignment — guided by a shared understanding of what drives impact and increased revenue across the entire customer journey.

Align Teams

Align teams around a shared view of performance.

Invest With Confidence

Make smarter, more confident investment decisions.

Drive Growth

Identify where you’re excelling in the market and what’s holding you back.

VP and Principal Analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee explains how Forrester’s Total Experience Score connects both brand and customer experiences to give a full picture of the strength of your brand promise and how well you’re delivering on it.

What Makes Total Experience Score Unique

Forrester has assessed CX quality since 2006, refining the methodology in 2025 to uniquely include brand experience evaluation. The new integrated Total Experience Score is the only measurement available to the B2C and B2B2C consumer market that captures the full customer journey end to end:

  • 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 the two experiences together with a single, connected data set.

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.

How It Works

The Total Experience Score is powered by the integration of two proven Forrester methodologies:

  • Brand Experience Index (BX Index™): measures key brand drivers — salience, fit, and trust — across customers and noncustomers
  • Customer Experience Index (CX Index™): measures effectiveness, ease, and emotion — based on actual customer data

Together, these two measures form a single, unified score that reflects how well all customers experience the promise your brand makes. To surface what truly moves the needle, Forrester complements scores with customer-focused insights and growth grids.

Introducing The Growth Grid

Insights must become action to drive brand growth. The growth grid is Forrester’s framework to apply the Total Experience Score, becoming your roadmap for action. It shows where your brand stands today — and where it can go — by mapping performance across both brand promise and experience delivery.

Brands are measured through three key lenses:

  • Are you making strong promises?
  • Are you keeping them?
  • And are you growing because of it?

A Deeper Look: Data, Driver Analysis, And Methodology

To determine each score, Forrester rigorously analyzes thousands of data points from more than 300,000 customers and noncustomers of more than 400 brands across 13 countries and 10 industries.

Algorithms Weighted By Industry And Geography

The Total Experience Score, BX Index, and CX Index are calculated using Forrester’s proprietary algorithms. These algorithms are uniquely weighted to account for the varying impacts of key dimensions of CX and BX quality and take into consideration different loyalty dynamics across industries. Learn more about the methodology of Total Experience Score, CX Index, and BX Index.

How It Helps

The Total Experience Score isn’t just a diagnostic score — it’s a decision-making tool for B2C marketing leaders, CX leaders, and digital leaders to use as a benchmark for action and performance on key business outcomes, such as revenue.

It helps you:

  • Align marketing, CX, and digital teams around a shared view of performance.
  • Prioritize investments that drive the most impact and ROI.
  • Identify the drivers to act on to improve your brand-to-experience journey.
  • Benchmark against competitors and industry leaders.
  • Grow by delivering more consistent, connected, and compelling experiences.

You can access Forrester’s Total Experience Score data and insights through Forrester Decisions research services for customer experience, B2C marketing, and digital business and strategy leaders.

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