Enroll in the Customer Experience Program Today!
Online, 8 Modules
Course Access Dates: Enroll Anytime (Self-Paced)
Live Instructor Sessions: Optional Corporate Programs
Platform(s): Canvas LMS
Self-Paced Course Access: $4,995 (contact program manager for discount options)
About the Program
Companies providing excellent customer experiences set themselves apart from the competition. They understand how they deliver to their customers can be as or more important than what they deliver. The Customer Experience Program may be one of the most important investments your company can make. Learn what it takes to create brand experiences to drive loyalty, achieve higher revenue gains, and reduce costs. Develop deeper insights and integrate innovative strategies to help your organization see the world through your customer's eyes.
The Customer Experience Program is designed by industry experts for professionals seeking practical tools for this fast-growing discipline. From your initial CX maturity assessment, vision development and goal setting, persona and journey design, to empathy stories and cultural engagement, be ready to roll up your sleeves and apply your new skills in this hands-on, interactive course.
Program Curriculum
The Customer Experience Program meets the same high academic standards of our graduate programs, with a challenging interdisciplinary curriculum designed to prepare you to analyze, create, and deliver unique customer experiences.
Each module builds your skills, helps you develop strategies, and provides you a full CX Ultimate Toolkit with OVER 70 workbooks, eBooks, team-focused activities, templates, assessments, planning guides, posters - AND an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Workshop! All to help YOU on the road to immediate success.
Roll-up your sleeves and be prepared to learn innovative methodologies developed by top companies to enhance the Customer Experience efforts in your organization. Work on your own projects throughout the program to reap the fastest ROI and walk away ready to make a difference. Join us on a journey to learn the key principles, strategies, and tools that will elevate your CX expertise and empower you to drive positive change.
Module 1 - Customer Experience Introduction
Define the concept of Customer Experience. Find out what makes a beloved company and the essential elements that endear these brands to us.
- Identify Customer Experience leaders and laggards.
- Discuss what sets these types of experiences apart from others, making you less likely to advocate for a certain brand.
- Create your comparison scorecard to identify critical elements that set leaders apart from the rest.
Module 2 - Customer Experience Strategy for Success
Learn why Customer Experience isn’t a project with a start and end date, and why this isn’t a state of mind – it’s a state of your organization and it starts at the top. Integrating Customer Experience into business strategy, and skillfully executing, leads to enormous rewards. You’ll achieve higher customer engagement, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction.
- Develop insights into what a customer-centric organization looks like and how to get there.
- Discover elements that comprise an effective and strategic customer experience plan.
- Create critical goals and roadmap to help reach your customer experience vision.
Module 3 - Your Customers, Their Journey
Customer Experience Journey Maps are arguably the most important instrument for capturing your customer’s true interactions, emotionally and cognitively, with your company’s brand. Discover your customers and their experiences, and use these strategic tools for communications, analysis, planning, management, and innovation.
- Develop insightful customer personas and stories that promote cultural empathy and impact decisions.
- Identify critical customer views of interactions throughout multi-channel touchpoints.
- Use journey maps to capture experiences and emotions and improve the lives of your customers.
Module 4 - Accelerate & Improve Decisions with Data
Customer Experience initiatives fizzle quickly if you don’t connect the dots between your customers’ perceptions, touch points, service delivery, cost savings and ROI. Customer churn rates, share of wallet, Net Promoter Scores, average handling times, and cost of acquisition, can and need to tie to your bottom line.
- Explore leading practices that drive ongoing business improvements.
- Link customer perceptions with operational costs and profitability.
- Discover the most relevant, actionable metrics for your organization to drive desired business results.
Module 5 - Customer-Focused Innovation
Customer-Focused Innovation is the perfect blend of theory, practice, strategy, and invention. Innovating on behalf of your customers doesn’t start with a problem statement – it starts with your customer. Learn to use empathy techniques to break through the culture barrier at your company and close the “knowing-doing” gap.
- Apply creative strategies that support innovation.
- Gain insights to understand the needs of your customers.
- Work to improve customer experience while adding value they’ll rave about.
Module 6 - Principles of Customer Relationship Building
Customer Experience is multi-faceted and relies on the strong relationships you build with your customers. Use the Customer Relationship Development Model to identify and define core elements to build relationships and improve overall experiences. Through collaboration and ideation, you create a maturity matrix specifically for your business.
- Apply modern relationship building models.
- Develop your own Customer Experience-based Customer Relationship Maturity Matrix.
- Discover essential elements and apply the Technology Framework for CRM and Customer Experience.
Module 7 - Customer First Culture
Great customer experience starts with great employee experience. Educate yourself and your workforce on how to foster a customer-first culture that positions you for the greatest, longest-term success. This isn’t “blowing up” the culture you already have – it’s embracing what you have and collaborating to make a difference for your customers.
- Learn how to engage the hearts and minds of your people.
- Determine how to work together to deliver your brand promise and great customer experiences.
- Enjoy an AI workshop, where you’ll use AI as a creative assistant in generating ideas and content to engage your employees.
Module 8 - Navigating Politics of Change
Change is hard, people are resistant, and the market is becoming more fiercely competitive every day. It takes a special leader to navigate these waters and get your entire organization marching to the same drummer. During this module, you’ll create your executive presentation and arm yourself with these indispensable leadership skills.
- Gain valuable insights on how to align customer-centric practices with business goals.
- Discover essential business drivers and effective strategies for advocating CX within your organization.
- Complete the PASSION leadership assessment and workbook, to lead with purpose, connect authentically, drive innovation, and navigate positive transformations within your organization.
Capstone Project: Your Customer Experience Strategic Plan
The program culminates in your very own strategic plan for your organization. To achieve the highest return-on-investment, you're encouraged to add to the capstone throughout the program. By following your strategic plan, you'll operationalize and infuse customer experience ideals into your cultural DNA. As an added bonus, by the end of the class you'll have completed your very own professional Customer Experience portfolio.
Program Instructors & Content Experts
Carol Buehrens
Carol’s passion for improving customer experience has resulted in numerous awards, including the prestigious “CX Innovation Award” from the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), ICW Group CEO Award, the Liberty Mutual Star Award, and is listed in the World's Top 30 Customer Service Professionals.
A Founding Member and Expert Panel Member of the international Customer Experience Professional Association (CXPA), Carol is also an active member of the San Diego Customer Experience Special Interest Group (CX SIG), and Professor at California State University Fullerton and University of California San Diego.
Michael Truett
Erich Dietz
Stephene Klein
Outside of academia, Stephene has consistently made a global impact. She is a Gold Medalist, Storytelling Writing Award Winner (2024), and the recipient of the Global Vision Award for Brand Strategy (2023). She was also the featured cover story of South Florida Magazine (2021), and has etched her place in the global business echelons. Her dynamic role at Zschool, saw her spearhead over 500+ Advisory Board meetings, annually, shaping the strategic direction for over 10,000 CxOs and senior executives worldwide.
With 20+ years of award-winning business development and engagement marketing experience, coupled with 15+ years of senior leadership roles, Stephene consistently drives sustainable revenue growth for leading global companies. Her extensive experience across multiple domains, including sales, marketing, and partnerships, and her well-established global network, position her as a catalyst for success in complex business environments.
Tiffany Craft
A pioneer in the social media space, Tiffany has been at the forefront of building impactful partnerships within online communities. She excels in fostering collaborations with retail, media and entertainment providers and leveraging user-generated content to enhance brand visibility and engagement. These initiatives have cultivated authentic, loyal audiences while setting new standards for digital marketing.
Tiffany's strategic vision is complemented by her creativity and data-driven approach to advertising. Her ability to merge traditional media with cutting-edge digital strategies has resulted in award-winning campaigns that resonate globally. She believes that strategic AI integration is also essential for organizations to unlock new efficiencies, gain actionable insights, and maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly data-driven world.
Beyond her professional achievements, Tiffany is dedicated to mentoring future leaders and advancing inclusion within a broad range of industry sectors. As a sought-after speaker, she frequently shares her insights on global marketing trends, digital transformation, and the evolving role of partnerships in building communities.
"As Vice President of Advisory Experience at Zschool, I lead a team of advisors, who are actively collaborating with faculty in shaping curriculum across multiple disciplines, ensuring it reflects the latest trends and best practices in organizational leadership. By incorporating diverse areas of expertise, we create a comprehensive learning experience that equips future leaders with the skills necessary to drive innovation and impact within their organizations."
With her passion for innovation and proven leadership, Tiffany continues to redefine success in international business and marketing, making her a trailblazer in the industry.
What others say about the Customer Experience Program...
"Becoming a CX expert doesn't happen automatically or overnight. It requires on-the-job training AND taking a course at a reputable university. That's exactly what I did and recommend you take the same program. Read about my #CX class experience and how you can differentiate your brand, too!"
- Stacy Sherman, MBA, CUA, Customer Experience Leader
"This program has done a great job of putting customer experience front and center for our organization. The concepts and lectures in the program are engaging and easy to follow, and the worksheets allow me to easily apply the concepts to my daily work. I recommend this CX program for anyone looking to bring customer experience to the forefront of their business."
- Jenny Baranowski, Awards Director, SIIA
"The course has been great for me and my company. It has given us new ways of thinking, allowed us to look at different ways of doing things and pull from successes in other industries that have translated into successes in our business that we wouldn’t have explored before."
- Brett Fish, Cognizant, Senior Director Business Development
Zschool Provides Impactful Professional Education Courses
At Zschool, we collaborate with universities and corporations to coordinate, develop, refine, market, and facilitate exceptional professional education programs. We combine the academic rigor of a university with the real-world practicality necessary to generate a return on investment.
As a full-service educational partner, we deliver exceptional, highly engaging curriculum to professionals, across a variety of industries. We bring together educational programs and fortune 500 corporations for a unique partnership that provides mutual benefit and growth.
Our mission is to provide the best learning experiences possible! We don’t take our mission lightly. At Zschool, we work hard everyday to make sure our offerings are current, relevant and incorporate the best frameworks - and also superior participant experiences. We strive to set our programs apart from others. We believe that learning should be engaging, thought-provoking, hands-on, and awesome - thereby fostering loyal advocates.
Our Core Values
Honesty
We feel the classroom should be a safe haven to open up and be honest with each other. We don’t teach theory - we impart practical advice and authentic learnings. Instructors provide the “real-scoop” on the interworking of organizations, delivering both their successes and failures, supplying deep insights from real experiences. Imparting this type of information allows participants to understand roadblocks they themselves may encounter, along with authentic strategies to overcome and succeed.
Focus
Our focus and passion is what brings us to triumph. We sweat the details to make sure your participants receive unsurpassed executive, leadership and business education. We make sure participants have great experiences and audit classes to confirm up-to-date materials, participant engagement, and a cohesive flow of teaching. We provide tools to support participant learnings and focus on your brand to ensure that all class materials reflect highly on your image.
Encouragement
Teaching and mentoring takes more than standing up and regurgitating facts. It takes thoughtful encouragement - encouraging participants to overcome the fear of learning and changing behaviors. We feel this is a critical component and believe this characteristic is key to our leadership.
Compassion
When we define compassion, we include empathy, caring, kindness and true concern for others. By seeing the need of others, and by standing in their shoes, we provide amazing learning experiences that are unique and considerate for each participant. We consider compassion as the foundational nature of the very best teachers, and we settle for nothing less.
Passion Leads to Beautiful Things
Our Guiding Principles
- Our idea from day one has been to create and provide amazing courses.
- We strive for uncompromised, sincere, caring, and exceptional services (as close to perfection as possible).
- Mutual benefiting partnerships is very important to us, and we focus on creating value-added partnerships between our Zschool expert staff, and our large corporate network.
- We want to earn the right to be a "beloved company," known for providing exceptional education experiences and for being a valued partner.
- We take our mission seriously, "to provide the best learning experiences possible". We live our corporate values, "Honesty, Focus, Encouragement, Compassion." We feel that by doing this, we will become better citizens and contributors to the community.
Who should attend these programs?
We also have specialized courses that are geared towards Law Enforcement and First Responder Teams.
Are there any prerequisites or work experience required?
When can I start?
How long will it take to complete a program?
Fast-Track Courses consist of four modules and are designed to be completed within a 4-hour timeline. Although it may take you longer if you choose to review optional materials found on the Helpful Resources Pages. These materials can also be reviewed after completion of the course, as long as your course access is still permitting.
Mastery-Track Courses consist of eight modules, with each module containing 2-4 hours of coursework. We suggest completing at least one module per week, finishing in eight weeks. Overall, your total time spent can vary between 24-32 hours (depending on the projects you pick to work on). Although it may take you longer if you choose to review optional materials found on the Helpful Resources Pages. These materials can also be reviewed after completion of the course, as long as your course access is still permitting.
What's the online learning experience like?
You'll enjoy the freedom and flexibility of a self-paced course as you work through the online certificate programs. Unlike other online courses comprised solely of reading and tests, your online learning experience Includes:
- Learn by doing approach.
- Easy-to-use learning platform.
- Short video presentations that can be replayed and revisited as needed.
- Engaging activities and exercises that reinforce your new skills, and are downloadable for multi-purpose use.
- Knowledge challenges to test your learning.
- Interactive discussions with your peers.
- Professional plans of action to take back to your organization.
- An official university-backed certificate after completion.
- Inbox access to instructors and teacher aides.
- Helpful templates, eBooks, workbooks, posters and more, all included!
What type of technology and skills do I need for the online class?
For online courses, certain skills and up-to-date technology are needed to successfully complete the programs. This includes:
- Computer or tablet with Internet access
- Up to date browser, such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.
- Microsoft Word or equivalent
- Microsoft Excel or equivalent
- Microsoft PowerPoint or equivalent
- Adobe PDF Reader
Do I receive academic credit?
Is there an application fee?
What is the cost of the programs?
- Fast-Track Programs cost $450 per person
- Mastery-Track Programs cost $4,995 per person - Group discounts are available for teams of three or more individuals.
The price includes all course materials and access to the Executive Education Online Learning Portal. Our Learning Management System (LMS) is called "Canvas".