Quality Management and Customer Experience (CX)

This course is conceived as a reflection on how traditional and commonly used quality management models can be applied in the current business environment characterized by both globalization and digitalization and considering the growing importance of customer-centricity in the way relationships between organizations and customers are evolving and being handled.

Customer experience as the focus of business strategy is in historical terms a recent development and is at the center of a number of practices that are being adopted by a growing number of organizations to compete successfully in a changing business environment.

Quality management is a philosophy, methodology and system of tools aimed to create and maintain the appropriate mechanisms within organizations for continuous improvement. It involves all departments and employees and helps to reduce costs and exceed customers and other stakeholders’ expectations. Appropriate quality management is a basic need for the survival and competitive development of any organization in the global market. It ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent with customer´s expectations. It encompasses the concept of business excellence and sustainability as a means for competitiveness, efficiency improvement, and leadership. Quality management focuses on product/service quality but also on the means to achieve it.

The process of quality management encompasses four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. In this respect, the development of quality models to help organizations instill in all their strategies, processes and employees the idea of quality as well as the design of systems and tools that assure the best quality for their products and services through the appropriate control frameworks, accurate metrics and measurements and feedback mechanisms, becomes a mandate for leadership and competitiveness.

Preliminary assignment:

Readings:
Meyer, Christopher and André Schwager (2007). “Understanding Customer Experience,” Harvard Business Review, February

Activity:
Watch a video about a situation concerning United Airlines and the mistreatment of a passenger

Why did this happen?
Did internal processes back the way United took control of the situation?
What was the reaction from customers?
How did this affect United Airlines? What were the consequences

Class 1: Introduction: course overview, basic concepts

Class 2: Customer Experience management and principles

Class 3: Quality Management: concept, context and theories

Class 4: The principles of quality management

Class 5: The quality management function

Class 6: Quality management models and standards I

Feedback activity:

Presentation of project ideas to the class for discussion/feedback.

Home Project Assignments/mini projects are based on a research question (problem formulation) formulated by the students individually. Approval deadline will be defined by the instructor. Hand-in of the problem formulation directly to the instructor by the 3rd teaching week.

Class 7: Quality management models and standards II

Class 8: Quality management methods and tools

Class 9: Quality Customer Experience models

Class 10: Succesful customer experience and CX metrics

Class 11: Overview, review, Q&A

Course leader

Torsten Ringberg - Department of Marketing

Target group

This is a graduate level course. CBS Summer University courses at Copenhagen Business School is open to all and welcomes domestic and international students as well as professionals.

Course aim

Be able to apply the main principles of business excellence and customer experience

Know and explain how to use different models, methods and tools to deliver a quality customer experience

Relate quality management tools to the process of achieving the goals of the organization in the current business environment characterized by a profound transformation, where customers and their experiences have become the center of the business-customer relationship.

Reflect on the concept of ‘quality management’ and its implications for a better customer experience.

Credits info

7.5 EC
This is a 6-week course. You can combine up to two 6-week courses making 15 ECTS in total.

Fee info

DKK 6000: Tuition fee for Open University students (EU/EEA/Swiss citizenship)
DKK 15000: Tuition fee for non-European students.