Forrester Introduces The Total Experience Score: A New Metric For Measuring The Power Of A Unified Brand And Customer Experience

Aligning brand and customer experience empowers companies to outperform competitors, achieve up to 3.5x revenue growth, and earn higher customer retention and loyalty

NASHVILLE & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR)​ Global Total Experience Score Rankings, 2025, when companies align their brand promise with the experiences they deliver across both customer and noncustomer segments, they are better positioned to win and serve customers — unlocking up to 3.5x revenue growth and significantly boosting customer loyalty. Forrester’s research shows that brand experience (BX) and customer experience (CX) are interconnected. To drive growth, companies need a harmonized framework that evaluates both experiences in tandem.

Forrester’s Total Experience Score, a new metric launching today, integrates scores from Forrester’s new Brand Experience Index (BX Index™) and its long-standing Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) to generate a single score that reflects how both noncustomers and customers perceive a brand. The only metric that measures the impact of brand perceptions across the entire customer lifecycle, the Total Experience Score also provides an in-depth analysis to identify specific actions that companies can take to drive growth.

Key findings from the global Total Experience Score rankings include:

• In North America, direct banks excelled while insurers struggled. Direct banks achieved the highest average industry score in both the US and Canada, while the lowest average scores were for health insurers in the US and auto/home insurers in Canada.

• Europe has a large disparity between customers and noncustomers. The gap between customer and noncustomer scores is wide across Europe — 18 brands scored more than twice as high with customers as noncustomers. The top-scoring industry in the region was investment firms in the UK, while the lowest was Swedish banks.

• In Asia Pacific, investment firms performed strongly. The top-scoring industries in India and Singapore were investment firms, and in Australia, it was banks. The lowest-scoring industries in this region were banks in India and Singapore and auto home insurers in Australia.

To calculate a brand’s Total Experience Score, Forrester first analyzed the performance of 413 brands across 10 industries and 13 countries based on how more than 360,000 consumers perceived them. It then determined how these brands fared on the BX Index and CX Index. The interplay between BX and CX is further captured in a “growth grid,” Forrester’s snapshot of how successful a company is at both winning and serving customers and how it stacks against its peers. Companies that want to grow revenue must align their initiatives along both these vectors: Win new customers and serve existing customers to generate revenue from retention and enrichment. The noncustomer and customer components of the Total Experience Score, plotted on the two axes of the growth grid, represent each of these vectors.

“Driving growth requires a dual focus — shaping brand perceptions that inspire consideration and loyalty and strengthening them through consistent, customer-centric experiences,” said Keith Johnston, group research director at Forrester. “While BX and CX are powerful revenue drivers individually, when integrated into a cohesive total experience, they amplify one another to deliver even greater financial returns. Companies can use the growth grid as both a diagnostic and prescriptive tool to shape their brand and business strategy. Additionally, this framework allows companies to assess their competitive standing as well as performance across brands within their own portfolio.”

Forrester’s Total Experience Score, BX Index, and CX Index rankings and results are accessible within the Forrester Decisions portfolio of research services. Clients of Forrester Decisions services for Customer Experience, B2C Marketing Executives, and Digital Business & Strategy have access to the BX Index and CX Index annual benchmarking exercise to measure the interconnectedness between brand and customer experience.

Resources:

• Learn more about the Total Experience Score and how it can drive growth.
• Read more about the results of Forrester’s 2025 global CX Index and explore Forrester’s 2025 global CX Index report (client access required).
• Visit here to learn more about Forrester’s BX Index.
• Learn more about Forrester's CX Index, BX Index, and Total Experience Score methodologies.

About Forrester

Forrester (Nasdaq: FORR) is one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. We empower leaders in technology, customer experience, digital, marketing, sales, and product functions to be bold at work and accelerate growth through customer obsession. Our unique research and continuous guidance model helps executives and their teams achieve their initiatives and outcomes faster and with confidence. To learn more, visit Forrester.com.