Forrester has added employee experience to its proprietary Total Experience Score, placing EX alongside customer and brand experience in a new three-part model.
Using its Q2 earnings call to announce the change, the company signalled a broader shift in how customer outcomes are being evaluated.
For CX leaders, the update is a prompt to consider whether the systems, support and conditions surrounding frontline teams can sustain service quality as demand grows.
George F. Colony, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Forrester, said the addition of employee experience gives the company’s Total Experience Score a more complete picture of organisations’ growth potential.
“The TX score debuted in 2025, a unique metric that combines the customer experience and brand experience of large companies to accurately forecast the growth potential of those firms,” he noted.
“Added this year was a third component, employee experience, yielding a more complete view of where companies are tracking.”
Your Customer Outcomes Start Internally
Forrester’s notable change to its TX, EX, CX and brand experience reflects that customer outcomes are being further influenced by the day-to-day experience of the employees delivering those interactions.
Today, the conditions employees work under, including the tools they use, have a measurable influence on the quality of customer interactions.
“The TX score places companies in 4 groups based on our data. Leading, plateauing, lagging, and churning,” notes Colony.
“Our 2026 global total experience score rankings of 375 brands evaluated companies across Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America in 10 vertical markets.
“Overall, 41% of the organizations measured improved their scores from 2025, while only 3% declined.”
These figures demonstrate that progress is neither universal nor guaranteed, reinforcing Forrester’s argument that organizations need to pay attention to more than customer-facing initiatives if they want to improve long-term performance.
Furthermore, customer enterprise results highlighted during the rankings suggest that organizations are beginning to differentiate themselves based on broader experience strategies rather than customer experience alone.
This reveals that the inclusion of EX signals a growing recognition that workforce conditions are becoming a formal part of how business performance and customer outcomes are assessed.
How Forrester Turns Strategy Into Everyday Practice
Forrester’s WEM strategy enables its framework to become operational, providing the day-to-day systems that influence whether employees can consistently deliver positive customer outcomes.
This gives agents the confidence to resolve customer issues effectively, making EX a practical driver of satisfaction, resolution, and operational performance.
As organizations prepare for higher customer demand following the summer period, contact center leaders planning for autumn peaks need to forecast more than staffing levels alone.
This includes considering changes to channel volumes and inquiry complexity when accounting for training, employee absences, and support availability.
When a workforce operating at maximum occupancy appears efficient on paper, this often means that employees have little opportunity to learn, recover between interactions, or access guidance.
From here, service quality can quickly deteriorate during periods of sustained demand.
Christophe Favre, Chief Sales Officer at Forrester, explained that customers increasingly expect trusted expertise to be available directly within the tools they use every day.
“Customers now want to bring Forrester proprietary expertise where they work,” he said.
“They want to have Forrester embedded in their tools. They really want to make decisions to move faster with higher confidence.”
In customer service, AI can reduce time spent searching for information and handling routine tasks, but it works best alongside governance, human oversight, and clear escalation paths.
In this context, WEM becomes the foundation that turns EX into stronger customer performance.
How to Make Readiness More Meaningful
Forrester’s decision to make EX part of its TX Score creates a practical challenge for CX leaders preparing for peak periods, now requiring them to assess whether employees have the knowledge, capacity, and operational support to maintain service quality.
When workforce conditions are unprepared for these periods, customers may experience slower and inconsistent services when organizations neglect to introduce effective workforce planning, accessible knowledge, or outcome-focused coaching.
The organizations that do implement these can look beyond occupancy to reflect capacity alongside expected contact volumes during possible training requirements, complex cases, and the time needed to support quality interactions.
Furthermore, organizations should embed guidance into employees’ workflows and use outcomes to continuously improve coaching, training, and operations.
Ensuring demands are met during these periods, Forrester’s own AI adoption reflects this shift toward embedding knowledge into everyday work.
“Forrester AI usage increased to new highs in the quarter, with total users up 33% in Q2 versus Q1, and up 69% year-over-year,” Colony announced.
Carrie Johnson Fanlo, Chief Product Officer at Forrester, emphasized the company’s response to customers’ expectations as it remains at the forefront of AI-enabled research and decision-making support.
“We know from the conversations that we are having that we are on the front line of this, and that is what our customers expect us to be.”
As CX cannot be reliably owned by a single department, each department shapes the environment in which frontline employees work, extending WEM into the foundation for turning EX into better customer outcomes.
Forrester Key Earnings Results
Forrester’s Q2 2026 revenue fell 10% YoY, although management maintained its full-year guidance and reportedly remains on track to return to contract-value growth by year-end.
- Total revenue in Q2 declined to $100.2MN, down 10% from $111.7MN in Q2 2025
- Net income decreased to $7.7MN, down 21%
- Consulting revenue shrunk to $20MN, down 15% as a reflection of Forrester’s exit from strategy consulting
- Client retention stayed strong by increasing to 77%, up 3% YoY but down one sequentially
