Internet Learning Volume 5, Number 1, Fall 2016/Winter 2017 | Page 29

Internet Learning
responses to Questions 2 and 3. The results
indicted 7 affiliates labeled Persona
A, 11 Persona B, and 5 Persona C.
The interaction with the company’s
products or services at any stage of
the continuum is understood to be built
on deliberate, memorable, and positive
emotional experiences. “Experiences
with a strong emotional connection can
create long-lasting customer relationships
and fanatical advocates. The customer’s
connection with the experience
is not solely based on logic. It can be
a customer’s personal reflection of the
company and the brand.” (Bean & Van
Tyne, 2012, p. 77).
Summary
Measuring customer experience
judicially depends on a
company or institute’s leadership,
culture, products or services
and has varied in methodology. “When
looking at a topic like customer experience
within a business, it’s first important
to establish what a customer
is” (Simson, 2013, para 2). For this CX
benchmark observation, the customer
is doctoral chairs who strive to contribute
to the dissemination of knowledge
in their scholarly discipline. Little, if
any studies have examined the academy’s
use of CX theory as a vehicle to
purposefully interact with the customer.
The results of this study indicated
customer experience is a result of a
default state. However, with more focus
on the personas and creating purposeful
interactions customers stand a
higher chance to interact and will likely
continue moving along the customer
experience continuum. This movement
can be tracked by documenting the
number of visits on revamped CLSER
web pages where more details per page
and more interactive webinars and chatrooms
have been requested by those
who need more human interactions,
Persona B and C customers with less
publishing experience. Thus, a pilot of
redesigned webpages tested on the various
personas would prove beneficial.
In the case of the University of
Phoenix affiliates, a fourth persona,
age, might be prudent. It was later discovered
a higher degree of employed
chairs over the age of 70 exists. Personas
can also be based on generations to
align experiences that they would find
more meaningful. There is little doubt
that most Generation X and Y as well
as Millenniums are much more community
centric minded. For institutes
with these customer personas, a strategic
CX interaction strategy will require
insight to what they find most valuable
to support their research and publishing
goals.
Instead of relying on a survey
interaction, the personas could be obtained
upon affiliates or customers who
establish a website account as a requirement
of their profile. A logarithm could
be created that tracks the number of
logins and visits to each page to track
the continued interactions, but only in
websites where logins are required or
areas such as webinars, chat rooms, or
where blogs can be posted.
The limitations of the study are
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