Forrester released its 2026 Global Total Experience Score rankings on June 9. After several years of decline, customer experience is recovering. Across the 375 brands measured in both 2025 and 2026, 41% improved their score and only 3% declined. Canada looks strong. 53% of Canadian brands improved, and just 1% declined.

That is the headline. Forrester also changed what it measures, and that is the part worth your time.

Forrester changed what it measures

The Total Experience Score now combines three indexes. The Customer Experience Index (CX Index). The Brand Experience Index (BX Index). And, for the first time, an Employee Experience Index (EX Index). The message is direct. You cannot read customer experience on its own anymore. Employees are the mechanism that delivers the experience, so their experience now sits inside the score.

This is a measurement shift, not a slogan. For years CX leaders tracked CSAT, NPS, and a CX Index in isolation from the people doing the work. Forrester just put all three on one scorecard and refused to let any single number hide the others.

37%

Share of US brands where employee experience had a negative impact on the total experience score. Only 25% showed a positive impact. (Forrester, 2026)

Employee experience is dragging more brands down than up

In the US, the EX picture is poor. Only 25% of brands showed a positive employee-experience effect on their total score. 37% showed a negative one. So roughly one in three US brands is undermining its own customer experience through the way it treats and equips its people.

Canada looks better. 36% of Canadian brands showed a positive EX impact, and 11% showed a negative one. The rest were neutral. The gap is real here too. It is just not as wide.

Why this matters for regulated industries

Utilities, public agencies, and financial-services firms in Canada all run frontline teams under heavy load. What differs is whether the customer can walk. In utilities and most public services, customers are captive. Weak employee experience stays hidden there, because a captive customer keeps paying while frustrated staff burn out behind the counter. The CSAT score can look fine for a while. In banking and wealth, customers can and do leave. There, the same EX problem shows up as attrition and lost share of wallet, often before a survey catches it. Either way, the EX number tells you whether the customer number will hold.

Forrester's framing is blunt. Growth breaks when brand experience, customer experience, and employee experience pull in different directions. For a regulated operator, that usually shows up as rising handle times, falling first-contact resolution, and complaint volumes that climb even while you invest in the customer-facing channel.

What to do with this

  1. Measure employee experience with the same rigour as CSAT and NPS. Put it on the same dashboard, not a separate HR report.
  2. Close the loop on staff feedback, not only customer feedback. Treat the two as one system.
  3. Find where frontline workload is breaking the journey. AHT and FCR will point to it.
  4. Tie experience targets to retention and customer value, not to a survey score alone.

The Canadian results give CX leaders something to build on. RBC Dominion Securities led Canadian brands with a score of 60.0, and Desjardins was named among the high performers. Both sit in financial services. The customer-experience recovery is real. The work now is to keep the employee side from quietly pulling it back down.