Internet Learning Volume 5, Number 1, Fall 2016/Winter 2017 | Page 19

Internet Learning
ed insight into the level of perceived
promises of research and publishing
assistance and whether customers felt
such implied website and center promises
were kept, another measurement of
purposeful successful CX best practices
and theory.
Some leading contemporary
businesses have turned to customer experience
(CX and user experience (UX)
as a strategic advantage to help build an
emotional connection between prospects
and current customers that interact
with company messages, people,
processes, products, and services. The
leaders become different and better for
their customers and more profitable
and longer lasting than their competitors.
The goal of collective customer
and user experience is to turn customers
into product advocates. The concept
involves creating extraordinary valuable
and memorable CX so customers
continue to interact with the organization.
The continued user experience
or UX of the websites, mobile presences
and actual products or services are
the proof that promises made from the
beginning of the CX, regardless if they
were implicit or explicit, are kept and
clear. However, the literature is void of
the academy’s use of CX leadership service
initiatives. There are varying ways
in which CX has been measured, but no
best practice agreement since measuring
CX is unlike measuring customer
satisfaction and that different variables
must be measured for different product
offerings and services. These metrics
must be the type that customers care
about and those turning them into advocates—the
primary theory behind
successful customer experience integration
to be discussed.
It is important to note that CX is
not customer satisfaction or pure customer
engagement (CE) for engagement
sake. “CX involves the connection
that individuals form with organizations,
based on their experiences with
the offerings and activities of the organization”
(Vivek, Beatty, & Morgan,
2012, p. 133). Engagement is a construct
that for CX is embedded in the
creation of purposeful interactions. It
is not an idle process. This study is not
intended to be a treatise of engagement
theory, but rather an examination of the
practice of CX in the academy.
Review of the Literature
Customer satisfaction is important
for the survival of any
business and has been linked
to measuring a Net Promoter Score as
Reichheld (2006) has noted. Reichheld
focused on measuring gaps in service
quality. “This concept led to the popular
management adage of needing to
‘delight’ customers by always exceeding
their expectations. Service quality’s
most popular measure is SERVQUAL,
a 22-item scale whose dimensions are:
reliability, assurance, tangibility, empathy
and responsiveness” (as cited in
Maklan & Klaus, 2011, p. 775). However,
this measurement does not take
into account other important customer
experience design factors related to
customer persona nor whether the cus-
18