Customer Experience Quality Plummets: 21% of Brands Decline in Forrester CX Index 2025

Forrester’s 2025 Global Customer Experience Index Rankings: 21% Of Brands Declined, 6% Improved, And 73% Remained Unchanged

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06/24/2025 - 10:30 AM

CX hit an all-time low in North America, while Europe made some gains and Asia Pacific struggled

NASHVILLE, Tenn. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR) global Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) 2025 rankings, ongoing challenges that drove last year’s decline in customer experience (CX) quality — weaker employee experience, waning customer obsession, disappointing tech implementations, and economic volatility — continue to impact how consumers perceive CX quality. Furthermore, the disparity between the customer experience that brands intend to deliver and what customers actually experience is widening.

Globally, only 10 “elite” brands, the top 5% of brands in the CX Index for each country — Banca Mediolanum, Chewy, H-E-B, HSBC, ING, La Maison Simons, Navy Federal Credit Union, RBC Dominion Securities, USAA, and Zappos.com — maintained their status. This year, 14 new brands earned the elite spot on the CX Index, and only one of those (the US National Park Service) had statistically significant score gains from 2024 to secure its place. One other elite brand (HSBC in Singapore) improved its score from 2024.

Key findings from the global Customer Experience Index include:

In North America, a quarter of brands continued to underperform for two consecutive years. In the US, for the second year in a row, 25% of brands’ customer experience rankings declined in 2025, compared to only 7% that improved. Additionally, in most US industries, CX quality declined across all three dimensions: effectiveness, ease, and emotion. Amid ongoing economic volatility, customers continue to find it harder to justify the financial value they derive from their interactions with brands.

In Europe, some brand improvements drove nearly half of industries higher. Across the region, 7% of brands improved their customer experience scores this year while 2% declined and 90% were statistically unchanged. At the industry level, some European countries saw modest gains in the banking sector.

In Asia Pacific, widespread brand losses hindered progress across most industries. In Australia, Singapore, and India, 37% of brands’ customer experience scores fell and 58% remained unchanged.

“Customer experience continues to erode worldwide, reflecting a concerning multiyear downward trend and a shift in sentiment from positive to neutral,” said Pete Jacques, principal analyst at Forrester. “While the changes may seem subtle, they are significant and cannot be ignored. As customer loyalty declines, brands must focus on providing stronger customer experiences to reverse the trend. Even a minor improvement to a brand’s customer experience quality can reduce churn and increase share of wallet.”

Forrester’s CX Index methodology measures how well a brand’s CX strengthens the loyalty of its customers and prioritizes improvements that drive revenue. This year, more than 275,000 customers’ perceptions of 469 brands across 12 industries and 13 countries were analyzed. For the first time, Forrester also published the Brand Experience Index (BX Index™) and will unveil the Total Experience Score at its CX Summit North America, enabling brands to understand the full spectrum of interactions that shape customers’ perceptions.

These rankings 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 CX Index annual benchmarking exercise to help prioritize improvements based on industrywide trends and impact on customer loyalty.

Resources:

Read more about Forrester’s 2025 global CX Index rankings.
Explore Forrester’s 2025 global CX Index rankings research (client access required).
Learn more about Forrester's CX Index, BX Index, and Total Experience Score methodologies.

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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.