Study Guide

Learning outcomes

The students will be able to:
- Describe the industrial trends and challenges which are shaping the next generation of services and customer experiences in the digital age
- Discover innovation in customer experience at the intersection of the digital, physical and social realms. Design customer journey emotions and touchpoints
- Identify data sources and analytics to manage and monitor customer experiences
- Generate insights from data analytics to manage customer loyalty
- Identify what it takes to delight your Customers

Teaching methods

2 workshop days online in zoom
2 online sessions (supervision and presentations) in Zoom
Canvas e-learning environment
Individual assignments and a group assignment

Learning materials and recommended literature

Zaki, Mohamed, (2019), "Digital Transformation: Harnessing Digital Technologies for the Next Generation of Services" Journal of Services Marketing,33 (4), 429-435.
Bolton, R. N., McColl-Kennedy, J. R., Cheung, L., Gallan, A., Orsingher, C., Witell, L., & Zaki, M. (2018). Customer experience challenges: bringing together digital, physical and social realms. Journal of Service Management, 29 (5), 776-808.
McColl-Kennedy, J. R., Zaki, M., Lemon, K. N., Urmetzer, F. & Neely, A. (2019). “Gaining customer experience insights that matter”, Journal of Service Research, 21(1), 8-26.
Holmlund, Maria, Vaerenbergh, Yves Van; Ciuchita, Robert; Ravald, Annika; Sarantopoulos, Panagiotis; Villarroel Ordenes, Francisco; Zaki, Mohamed (2020), “Customer Experience Management in the Age of Big Data Analytics: A Strategic Framework”, Journal of Business Research.
Parasuraman, A; Ball, Joan; Aksoy, Lerzan; Keiningham, Timothy; Zaki, Mohamed (2020), "More than a Feeling?: Toward A Theory of Customer Delight", Journal of Service Management.
Hartmann, Philipp Max, Mohamed Zaki, Niels Feldmann, and Andy Neely (2016), “Capturing Value from Big Data - A Taxonomy of Data-Driven Business Models Used by Start-Up Firms,” International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 36 (10), 1382-1406.
Zaki, Mohamed, Bøe-lillegraven, T., and Andy Neely (2016). A Transition Towards a Data-Driven Business Model (DDBM): A Case Study of Nettavisen Online Newspaper Publishing. SAGE Publishing. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473970113.

Co-operation with working life and/or RDI

Group work can be done for an industry partner

Important dates

The E-learning environment (Canvas) will be published on January 8th, 2025 (afternoon)


-10 February 2025 at 10:30-15:30 (Finnish time, Zoom meetings)
-11 February 2025 at 10:30-15:30
-18 February 2025 at 16-19:30 Group meetings with the instructor (about 15-30 min per group)
-25 February 2025 at 16:30-19:30 presentations, assessment, and feedback

Students workload

5 ects: 135 hours of work

Content and scheduling

New technologies and new business models have already changed the way organisations interact with their customers and soon developments such as AI, robots and virtual reality will be a completely normal part of the customer experience alongside face to face engagements.

Managers will need to understand new ways to design customer experiences across the digital, physical and social ‘spaces’.

This course brings together designing and managing customer experience in the digital era, drawing on the latest work from the Cambridge Service Alliance. The course incorporates the practical use of frameworks and methods developed in Cambridge that have been tried and tested with over 350 companies worldwide

Further information for students

Dr Mohamed Zaki is the Deputy Director of the Cambridge Service Alliance at the University of Cambridge, a research centre that brings together the world’s leading firms and academics to address service challenges.

Mohamed’s research interests lie in the field of machine learning and its application on Digital Manufacturing and services. He uses an interdisciplinary approach of data science techniques to address a range of real organizations’ problems such as measuring and managing customer experience and customer loyalty. Other research interests include digital service transformation strategy and data-driven business models.

Mohamed’s research has been published in highly-ranked journals, Journal of Service Research, Journal Service Management, Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, PloS ONE, Journal of Production Planning & Control, Journal of Services Marketing as well as an edited book, book chapters and many conference articles.

Mohamed raised over £10 million from research council and industry to fund his research. Mohamed is a principle investigator, research manager and co-investigator in many UK research council projects (e.g. EPSRC, ESRC and Innovate UK) and industrial research projects sponsored by international organisations such as IBM, BAE Systems, Caterpillar, Rolls-Royce, Zoetis, Pearson, CEMEX, PWC and HCL technologies.

https://cambridgeservicealliance.eng.cam.ac.uk/About/directory/Mohamed

Grading scale

Approved/Failed

Evaluation methods and criteria

Individual assignments have to be accomplished before the workshop days in February. After completing them you may proceed to the workshop days section in the e-learning environment.