Customer Experience Management

Course Objective

For most customers, the last best experience they had with a service or product becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere. For companies delivering such a high experience becomes thus challenging. They must understand their customers’ specific journey and the moments of truth along their journeys to act accordingly. This course provides students the conceptual and analytic tools they need for a customer-centric approach to create a superior customer experience.

Course Content

Upon completion of this course, you will achieve the following:

• A holistic and integrated understanding of the core concept of customer experience management
• A tool kit to identify, analyze, and improve customer experiences across the customer journey
• Understand the challenges in customer experience management from the perspective of different industries and players acting in complex ecosystems
• Application of the models and approaches discussed in class to specific company challenges
• Advance your critical thinking and presentation / teaching skills

Additional Information Teaching Methods

Lectures (4h each week) to explore conceptual and analytical models of customer experience management and to work on practical customer experience challenges.

Tutorials (2h each week) with a flipped-classroom methodology.

Method of Assessment

Group assignment, individually graded (50%) and individual written exam (50%), each to be completed with a 5.0 minimum.

Literature

Core Literature

• De Keyser, A., Verleye, K., Lemon, K. N., Keiningham, T. L., & Klaus, P. (2020). Moving the customer experience field forward: introducing the touchpoints, context, qualities (TCQ) nomenclature. Journal of Service Research, 23(4), 433-455.
• Herhausen, D., Kleinlercher, K., Verhoef, P. C., Emrich, O., & Rudolph, T. (2019). Loyalty formation for different customer journey segments. Journal of Retailing, 95(3), 9-29.
• Huang, M. H., & Rust, R. T. (2018). Artificial intelligence in service. Journal of Service Research, 21(2), 155-172.
• Kranzbühler, A. M., Kleijnen, M. H., & Verlegh, P. W. (2019). Outsourcing the pain, keeping the pleasure: effects of outsourced touchpoints in the customer journey. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47, 308-327.
• Lemon, K., N., Verhoef, P., C. (2016). Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey. Journal of Marketing. P. 69 -96.
• Markey, R. (2020). Are you undervaluing your customers. Harvard Business Review, 109(1), 42-50.
• Porter, M. E., & Heppelmann, J. E. (2014). How smart, connected products are transforming competition. Harvard Business Review, 92(11), 64-88.
• Porter, M. E., & Heppelmann, J. E. (2015). How smart, connected products are transforming companies. Harvard Business review, 93(10), 96-114.
• Reichheld, F. F. (2003). The one number you need to grow. Harvard Business Review, 81(12), 46-55.
• Teixeira, T. S., & Jamieson, P. (2014). The decoupling effect of digital disruptors. Harvard Business School.

Additional Information

This course is a combination of lectures, discussions, case studies, and a flipped classroom setting. Students are taught how to improve the customer experience by identifying, mapping, and correcting the touchpoints along the customers’ journey. Academic and practical inputs from the lectures will bring the topic not only to life but give the students a state of the art perspective on how companies can succeed in delivering on the customer experience. Academic articles on specific topics in customer experience management and case studies will deepen specific aspects and challenges in customer experience management. Besides the lectures, the “Customer Experience Navigator” will be one of the major resources for students. It provides a guideline on how to successfully align customer segments and their decision making and purchasing processes.

We also adopt a flipped classroom principle in the course. Students will have to teach a tutorial on a specific customer experience topic in a group and have to hand in a reflection paper on the chosen topic in the end of the course.