How the score is calculated
Each statement is answered on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). A dimension scores the average of its statements. The overall score is the weighted average of the dimensions; the weights are shown below and total 5. A band is assigned only when every statement is answered, and an answer outside the scale counts as unanswered.
Every statement answered at 2 or below adds its action to your checklist, weakest dimension first. The next diagnostic is the one named below for your lowest-scoring dimension.
Bands
| Overall score | Band | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to below 1.8 | Foundational | CX work is at an early stage: efforts are scattered, mostly reactive, and governed differently from team to team. Priority: put basic measurement in place, name owners, and write a strategy before investing in technology. |
| 1.8 to below 2.6 | Developing | Some CX discipline exists, but it varies across the organization: strong pockets sit beside significant gaps. Priority: standardize operations, close the biggest gaps, and tie technology choices to the strategy. |
| 2.6 to below 3.4 | Operational | CX is managed as an operating discipline with defined metrics and governance. The foundation is solid; advanced capabilities (AI, orchestration of work across channels and systems, journey analytics) are still emerging. Priority: deepen analytics, expand automation, and tighten alignment between departments. |
| 3.4 to below 4.2 | Advanced | CX maturity is strong on most dimensions, and AI and analytics are part of daily operations. Priority: refine orchestration, govern AI at scale, and connect CX outcomes to company strategy. |
| 4.2 and above | Leading | CX is a mature operating discipline on all five dimensions, with AI governance and measured business outcomes. Priority: keep the discipline, test new capabilities in small, contained trials, and keep the measures honest. |
Dimensions, statements and actions
Strategy & Leadership
Weight 1 of 5. If lowest, next diagnostic: Transformation Readiness| Statement | Action if answered 2 or below |
|---|---|
| CX has a named executive sponsor with budget authority and a mandate that crosses departments. | Name one executive sponsor for CX, give them budget authority, and write down the cross-functional mandate they hold. |
| A written CX strategy ties CX work to business outcomes you can measure. | Write a one-page CX strategy that ties each initiative to a business outcome you already measure, such as retention, cost to serve or revenue. |
| CX investment decisions start from your own data and a written decision framework, before any vendor demo. | Adopt a written decision framework for CX investments and require a baseline, a target and a cost model before any vendor demo. |
| CX is run as an operating discipline, with defined roles, metrics and governance. | Define the CX operating roles, the five metrics they own and the forum where those metrics are reviewed. |
| Leadership reviews CX performance as closely as it reviews financial or sales performance. | Put CX metrics on the leadership agenda on the same cadence as the financial review, with owners and variance explanations. |
Operations & Workforce
Weight 1 of 5. If lowest, next diagnostic: QA Scorecard| Statement | Action if answered 2 or below |
|---|---|
| Workforce management (WFM) forecasts every channel from data and manages the day as it runs (intraday). | Forecast every channel from interval history and run an intraday review against that forecast each day. |
| Quality assurance (QA) covers both human and automated interactions, scored against the same criteria. | Extend the QA scorecard to automated interactions, such as bots and self-service, and score both against the same criteria. |
| Agents have a clear career path, regular coaching and a view of their own performance. | Publish the agent career path, schedule recurring coaching, and give each agent a view of their own performance data. |
| Each channel, voice, digital and asynchronous (email, messaging), has its own service level that is measured and managed. | Set and report a separate service level for each channel, including asynchronous ones. A single blended figure hides the channel that is struggling. |
| Escalation paths, exception handling and fallbacks are written down and have owners. | Document each escalation path and fallback, name an owner for each, and review them when processes change. |
Technology & Architecture
Weight 1 of 5. If lowest, next diagnostic: Platform Decision| Statement | Action if answered 2 or below |
|---|---|
| The contact center platform is cloud-based CCaaS (contact center as a service), with APIs to extend it and integrations into the rest of your systems. | Inventory which platform functions are reachable by API and list the integrations you need that the platform cannot support. |
| CRM (customer relationship management), knowledge, identity and workflow systems are integrated into the agent desktop. | Map the systems an agent opens for your top five contact types and integrate the most-used one into the desktop first. |
| Digital channels (chat, messaging, social) are routed and managed as carefully as voice. | Route digital channels through the same skills, queues and reporting as voice, with their own service levels. |
| One named architecture owner governs vendor selection and integration across the CX technology stack. | Name an architecture owner for the CX stack and route every vendor selection and integration decision through them. |
| A phased technology roadmap follows from the CX strategy. | Build a phased technology roadmap where each milestone traces to an objective in the CX strategy. |
Analytics & Intelligence
Weight 1 of 5. If lowest, next diagnostic: FCR Leakage| Statement | Action if answered 2 or below |
|---|---|
| Interaction analytics (speech, text and sentiment analysis) are used to find root causes and trends. | Use interaction analytics to find the top three contact drivers and assign each an owner to address the root cause. |
| Reporting goes beyond volume and AHT (average handle time) to measure resolution, customer effort and business outcomes. | Add resolution rate, repeat contact rate and customer effort to the standard report alongside volume and handle time. |
| What analytics finds turns into an operational change within weeks. | Set a monthly review where each analytics finding either becomes an operational change with an owner or is closed with a reason. |
| AI-generated insights (automated QA scoring, topic clustering, behavioral analysis) feed the QA workflow. | Feed automated QA scores and topic clusters into QA calibration, the sessions where reviewers agree how to score, so reviewers act on them. |
| Journey analytics connect contact center data to what customers did before and after they contacted you. | Join contact records to the customer events before and after the contact, starting with one journey that drives high volume. |
Governance & AI Readiness
Weight 1 of 5. If lowest, next diagnostic: AI Readiness Diagnostic| Statement | Action if answered 2 or below |
|---|---|
| Every AI or automation deployment has an owner, a test plan and a way to roll it back. | Require a test plan, an approval step and a written rollback procedure before any automation goes live. |
| A written policy says what AI may and may not do in customer interactions. | Write a policy that lists what AI may and may not do in customer interactions, and publish it to the teams that deploy it. |
| Privacy, consent and compliance requirements are checked in every technology decision. | Add a privacy, consent and compliance check to the technology decision process, with sign-off by the named owner. |
| Someone owns AI quality, model performance and the design of escalations from AI to people. | Name owners for AI quality, model performance and escalation design, and give each a metric they report on. |
| New AI capabilities are checked against operational readiness and your tolerance for risk before a pilot. | Define a readiness and risk checklist that every new AI capability passes before a pilot is approved. |
What this assessment cannot tell you
- It records how the respondent, the person answering, sees the organization. Nobody observes the operation, so two people in the same organization can score it differently.
- The score is a position on this rubric. It does not rank you against other organizations or give a percentile, because no sourced distribution of scores exists to compare against.
- All five dimensions carry equal weight. The rubric cannot know which one matters most to your business; you can.
- It recommends actions and a next diagnostic. It never recommends a vendor.