Experience Excellence Performance Levels

The Experience Excellence Index (EEI) was designed to provide organisations with a clear and credible understanding of their experience management capability.

Rather than simply producing a score, ICXI created a structured set of Performance Levels that allow organisations to understand where they sit on the maturity journey toward experience excellence.

These levels provide meaningful context for the Experience Excellence Score and help organisations interpret what their results actually represent in terms of organisational capability.

The Performance Levels also create a clear pathway for improvement, enabling organisations to understand the steps required to progress from foundational capability toward world‑class experience leadership.

How the Experience Excellence Score is Calculated

The Experience Excellence Score ranges from 1 to 100 and represents the overall maturity of an organisation’s ability to design, manage, and continuously improve the experiences it delivers.

The score is derived from a structured assessment across multiple pillars of experience management. Each pillar contains a series of carefully designed questions that evaluate leadership, culture, governance, operational design, measurement practices, and improvement capability.

Responses to these pillar questions are assessed using maturity-based scales rather than traditional opinion-based survey ratings.

Maturity-Based Assessment Model

Unlike many traditional surveys that rely on general Likert-scale responses (such as strongly agree to strongly disagree), the Experience Excellence Index uses structured maturity scales linked directly to the pillar questions.

Each response option represents a defined level of organisational capability. This means the scoring reflects the maturity of systems, processes, leadership practices, and operational structures rather than subjective perception.

Because of this design, the EEI assessment measures organisational capability rather than sentiment. The maturity scales therefore function as a structured evaluation of how effectively the organisation has embedded experience management practices into its operations.

Performance Level Bands

Based on the overall Experience Excellence Score, organisations are assigned to one of five performance levels.

These levels represent stages on the journey toward experience excellence:

Foundation (Score below 40)

Organisations at this level are at an early stage in developing structured experience management capability. Processes may be informal or inconsistent, and leadership focus on experience strategy may still be emerging.

Evolving (Score 40–59)

Organisations have begun to develop structured approaches to experience management. Some systems, measurement practices, and leadership initiatives are in place, although capability may not yet be fully integrated across the organisation.

Pioneering (Score 60–74)

Organisations demonstrate a strong commitment to experience management and have established clear practices for improving customer, employee, or patient experience. Experience considerations are increasingly embedded in operational decision-making.

Outstanding (Score 75–89)

Organisations at this level have mature experience management capabilities supported by strong leadership, structured governance, effective measurement systems, and continuous improvement practices.

Exemplary (Score 90–100)

This level represents global leadership in experience excellence. Organisations operating at this level demonstrate highly advanced experience management capability and consistently deliver exceptional experiences supported by strong culture, leadership, and operational systems.

Supporting Continuous Improvement

The purpose of the Performance Level framework is not simply to categorise organisations, but to support continuous improvement.

By understanding their current performance level, organisations can identify the next stage of maturity and focus their improvement efforts on the areas that will have the greatest impact.

Many organisations choose to repeat the Experience Excellence Index assessment periodically in order to measure progress and track their journey toward higher levels of experience excellence.

Through this structured maturity model, the Experience Excellence Index provides organisations with both a benchmark and a roadmap for achieving sustainable experience leadership.