June 27, 2025
Perception Is Profit: Forrester’s Total Experience Score Reveals All
New research from Forrester reveals that when companies align their brand promise with actual customer experience, they can unlock up to 3.5x more revenue growth. Yet, many brands are missing this opportunity. Forrester’s 2025 Global Total Experience Score Rankings show that companies who bridge the gap between what they say and what they do—across both customer and non-customer experiences—are significantly more likely to win new business and build loyalty.
“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.”
Forrester has introduced a new metric, the Total Experience Score, which combines insights from its established Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) with its brand-new Brand Experience Index (BX Index™). This single score reflects how people perceive the brand.
It’s the first metric to provide a comprehensive view across the entire customer lifecycle—from attraction to loyalty—and it aims to reveal where businesses are over-promising, under-delivering, or hitting the sweet spot of growth.
The Global Findings
In North America, direct-to-consumer banks topped the charts in both the U.S. and Canada, while health and auto/home insurers fell to the bottom. In Europe, the disconnect between customer and non-customer impressions was especially stark—18 brands scored more than twice as high with their customers as with the general public. Additionally, in Asia Pacific, investment firms led the pack in India and Singapore, with traditional banks earning the highest scores in Australia. Still, auto and home insurers in the region consistently underperformed across the board.
This disparity between what companies promise and what people experience—whether they’ve bought from you or not—is more than a marketing problem. It’s a growth blocker. Forrester’s analysis of 413 brands across 13 countries, informed by over 360,000 consumer perceptions, demonstrates that brands need to align their acquisition strategies with their service delivery to truly grow.
Their “growth grid” framework illustrates how companies can win and serve customers, measuring perception along two critical axes: how non-customers see your brand, and how customers experience it.