Students

MMBA8027 – Customer Experience Management: Succeeding through Customer-Centricity

2025 – Term 4, Online-scheduled-weekday

General Information

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Unit convenor and teaching staff Unit convenor and teaching staff
Karen Ganschow
karen.ganschow@mq.edu.au
Credit points Credit points
10
Prerequisites Prerequisites
Admission to MBA and MMBA8020
Corequisites Corequisites
Co-badged status Co-badged status
Unit description Unit description

Customer Experience is the new competitive battleground. Businesses committed to customer moments of truth thrive, whereas those who only pay customer experience lip service typically struggle, if not disappear. This unit explores the strategies and techniques for understanding customer needs, enhancing interactions, and building customer loyalty. From journey mapping to service design, students will learn to orchestrate memorable and compelling experiences that drive customer satisfaction and long-term business growth. The unit focuses on customer-centric strategies: identifying customer needs and preferences through comprehensive consumer behaviour analysis, enabling the development of effective and personalised customer engagement programs. This leads to enhancing customer interactions by exploring techniques for improving the quality of customer interactions across touchpoints, from pre-purchase to post-purchase experiences. A critical success factor is organisational alignment for customer focus, which aligns all functions to deliver seamless and consistent customer experiences. To become genuinely customer-centric, executives need to develop an outside-in perspective across the entire organisation; therefore, this unit will also provide insights into how managers can lead change within their organisation.

Important Academic Dates

Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:

  • ULO1: Analyse and evaluate ways to create and manage successful customer experiences.
  • ULO2: Appraise the customer experience strategy challenge.
  • ULO3: Generate insights around customers and technology to optimise the organisation's ability to foster customer experience.
  • ULO4: Individually and in teams, develop a customer experience strategy that integrates elements of customer experience design and transformation program.

General Assessment Information

Late Assessment Submission Penalty (written assessments) Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends).

After the 7th day, a grade of ‘0’ will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.55pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical concern.

For any late submissions of time-sensitive tasks, such as scheduled tests/exams, performance assessments/presentations, and/or scheduled practical assessments/labs, students need to apply for Special Consideration.

Assessment Tasks

Name Weighting Hurdle Due
Professional practice: Customer-centric Experience Strategies 40% No Week 10
Skills Development: Provocative Discussion Contribution 20% No Week 3
Professional Practice: Case Study Analysis 40% No Week 7

Professional practice: Customer-centric Experience Strategies

Assessment Type 1: Project
Indicative Time on Task 2: 10 hours
Due: Week 10
Weighting: 40%

 

The purpose of this assessment is for you to work with peers to demonstrate your ability to develop a strategy to manage customer experience.

You will prepare (1) a group presentation and (2) a written report to conduct voice of customer analysis, environment scan for emerging trends and customer journey and apply customer centered design techniques to identify possible recommendations.

Skills in focus:

  • Discipline knowledge
  • Critical thinking
  • Problem solving
  • Communication
  • Collaboration

Deliverable: Group presentation [max. 20 minutes] and Written submission [max. 2,500 words]

Group and individual assessment

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Generate insights around customers and technology to optimise the organisation's ability to foster customer experience.
  • Individually and in teams, develop a customer experience strategy that integrates elements of customer experience design and transformation program.

Skills Development: Provocative Discussion Contribution

Assessment Type 1: Debate
Indicative Time on Task 2: 10 hours
Due: Week 3
Weighting: 20%

 

The purpose of this assessment is for you to demonstrate your understanding of an emerging trend that impact customer experience and your ability to debate and discuss about the trends with peers.

You will pitch an emerging trend that impacts customer experience on Discussion Forum and facilitate the debate of the trend proposed.

Skills in focus:

  • Discipline knowledge
  • Critical thinking
  • Communication

Deliverable: Written submission [Discussion forum posts]

Individual assessment

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Analyse and evaluate ways to create and manage successful customer experiences.
  • Appraise the customer experience strategy challenge.

Professional Practice: Case Study Analysis

Assessment Type 1: Case study/analysis
Indicative Time on Task 2: 20 hours
Due: Week 7
Weighting: 40%

 

The purpose of this assessment is for you to demonstrate your ability to apply relevant concepts and theories to solve the case and defend solutions to the case questions.

You will prepare a written report to analyse a case, marshal your thoughts and ideas and communicate them effectively.

Skills in focus:

  • Critical thinking
  • Problem solving
  • Discipline knowledge
  • Communication

Deliverable: Written submission [max. 2,500 words]

Individual assessment

 
On successful completion you will be able to:
  • Analyse and evaluate ways to create and manage successful customer experiences.
  • Appraise the customer experience strategy challenge.

1 If you need help with your assignment, please contact:

  • the academic teaching staff in your unit for guidance in understanding or completing this type of assessment
  • the Writing Centre for academic skills support.

2 Indicative time-on-task is an estimate of the time required for completion of the assessment task and is subject to individual variation

Delivery and Resources

This unit involves ten (10) weekly sessions involving pre read by the participants, industry research, an overview of theory and in class discussions.

The sessions are highly interactive and will expect the participants to be prepared for the discussion, debates and review of case studies.

There will be theory and review of good and bad practice, break out discussions, analysis and prototyping.

Finally there is a group project which would involve design thinking, primary research or observation and a group presentation of the analysis and recommendations

Policies and Procedures

Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au). Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:

Students seeking more policy resources can visit Student Policies (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/policies). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.

To find other policies relating to Teaching and Learning, visit Policy Central (https://policies.mq.edu.au) and use the search tool.

Student Code of Conduct

Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/admin/other-resources/student-conduct

Results

Results published on platform other than eStudent, (eg. iLearn, Coursera etc.) or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit connect.mq.edu.au or if you are a Global MBA student contact globalmba.support@mq.edu.au

Academic Integrity

At Macquarie, we believe academic integrity – honesty, respect, trust, responsibility, fairness and courage – is at the core of learning, teaching and research. We recognise that meeting the expectations required to complete your assessments can be challenging. So, we offer you a range of resources and services to help you reach your potential, including free online writing and maths support, academic skills development and wellbeing consultations.

Student Support

Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/

Academic Success

Academic Success provides resources to develop your English language proficiency, academic writing, and communication skills.

The Library provides online and face to face support to help you find and use relevant information resources. 

Student Services and Support

Macquarie University offers a range of Student Support Services including:

Student Enquiries

Got a question? Ask us via the Service Connect Portal, or contact Service Connect.

IT Help

For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/information_technology/help/. 

When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.

Unit information based on version 2025.07 of the Handbook