Take advantage of our limited-time offer and save on this program now through Labor Day - pay just $999! Secure your spot and start learning today!
This Customer Experience Leadership with AI Certificate Program equips professionals with the strategies, tools, and leadership skills needed to design and deliver exceptional customer experiences. You’ll learn how to align CX with business goals, leverage data and AI to innovate, drive insights, and lead customer-focused transformation across your organization.
Through hands-on projects, real-world applications, and AI-powered tools, you’ll build customer personas, map journeys, develop CX strategies, innovate, and create an executive presentation to influence change. Along the way, you’ll explore how to foster a customer-first culture, engage employees, and use innovation and empathy to create meaningful, lasting experiences.
Enroll in the Customer Experience Leadership with AI Certificate 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) ---> Use discount code LABORDAY at checkout to receive your exclusive discounted rate of $999.
About the Program
Learn what it takes to design customer experiences that build loyalty, drive revenue, and reduce costs. Develop deeper insights and leverage data and AI-powered strategies to help your organization see the world through your customers’ eyes.
The Customer Experience Leadership with AI Certificate Program is designed by industry experts for professionals ready to lead meaningful change. From your initial CX maturity assessment, vision development, and goal setting to persona creation, journey mapping, empathy-driven innovation, and cultural engagement, you’ll gain practical tools you can apply immediately. Through hands-on projects and real-world applications, you’ll build the confidence and capability to influence your organization and deliver lasting impact.
What Makes the Program Different?
Built for Action - Not Just Theory
This isn’t a passive learning experience. You’ll work on your own organization throughout the program – building a complete Customer Experience Portfolio with strategies, tools, and solutions you can apply immediately.
Leadership-Focused, Not Just CX Basics
Most CX courses teach what customer experience is. This program teaches you how to lead it – including influencing stakeholders, aligning to business drivers, and communicating with the C-suite.
AI-Enhanced for Modern CX
You’ll explore how AI can elevate customer experience, from insights, personalization, and team engagement, to using your own CX Coach mentor, while maintaining a strong human-centered approach.
Proven Frameworks You Can Use Right Away
You won’t just learn concepts – you’ll apply practical frameworks like:
- HEART for customer-focused innovation
- SHAPE for building employee habits and culture
- PASSION for leadership and influence
These tools help you move from ideas to execution.
Real Business Impact & ROI Focus
Every part of the program connects back to business outcomes – revenue, retention, cost reduction, and customer loyalty – so you can clearly demonstrate the value of CX in your organization.
Culture & Employee Engagement at the Core
You’ll learn how to build a customer-first culture and even create an AI-powered employee engagement project. Because great CX starts from within!
Executive-Ready Outcomes
You’ll finish the program with:
- A complete CX Strategy & Portfolio
- An Executive Presentation to influence leadership
A Personal Action Plan to lead change
For Individuals8 Modules Online ($4,995) Rolling Admission - Start Anytime
Ideal for professionals ready to lead customer experience transformation in their organization. | For Teams and OrganizationsCustomized Corporate Programs Contact the Zschool Program Manager for Pricing & Scheduling
Perfect for teams looking to accelerate customer experience transformation and build a customer-first culture. |
CX Curriculum
Each module builds your skills and equips you with practical strategies, supported by a robust CX Ultimate Toolkit featuring OVER 60 resources, including workshop booklets, team-focused activities, templates, assessments, planning guides, and culture-building tools. Throughout the program, you’ll apply what you learn directly to your organization – culminating in a complete Customer Experience Portfolio with real, actionable solutions.
Module 1 - Customer Experience Introduction
Build a strong foundation by defining customer experience and understanding what differentiates beloved brands from the rest. Explore the elements that create emotional connections, drive loyalty, and influence customer advocacy.
- Identify Customer Experience leaders and laggards.
- Analyze what makes experiences memorable – or forgettable.
- Create a comparison scorecard to evaluate critical CX elements.
Module 2 - Customer Experience Strategy for Success
Learn how to position customer experience as a core business strategy, not just an initiative. Explore how organizations embed CX into their culture and operations, and how AI and data can enhance decision-making, personalization, and predictive insights.
- Develop insights into what a truly customer-centric organization looks like.
- Build your CX vision, strategic goals, objectives, and roadmap.
- Explore how AI can support CX strategy, engagement, and business impact.
Module 3 - Your Customers, Their Journey
Dive deep into your customers’ world by developing personas and mapping their journeys across channels and touchpoints. Learn how to capture both emotional and functional aspects of the experience to uncover meaningful opportunities for improvement.
- Create empathy-driven personas that influence decisions and culture.
- Map high-level and detailed customer journeys.
- Identify key moments, pain points, and opportunities to enhance experiences.
Module 4 - Accelerate & Improve Decisions with Data
Customer experience efforts must connect to real business outcomes. Learn how to link customer perceptions to operational performance, cost savings, and revenue growth using meaningful data and metrics.
- Explore leading practices for data-driven CX improvement.
- Connect customer insights to business drivers like ROI, churn, and loyalty.
- Identify and apply the most relevant metrics for your organization.
Module 5 - Customer-Focused Innovation
Innovate by putting your customers at the center. Using empathy and the HEART framework, you’ll learn how to identify pain points, break through organizational barriers, and design meaningful, customer-driven solutions.
- Apply empathy techniques to uncover customer needs and frustrations.
- Use HEART to guide innovation from insight to action.
- Develop creative solutions that enhance experiences and add real value.
Module 6 - Principles of Customer Relationship Building
Customer experience is built on the strength of your relationships. Explore the elements that define trust, engagement, and long-term loyalty, and learn how to manage relationships across the entire customer journey.
- Apply modern relationship-building models and frameworks.
- Develop a Customer Relationship Maturity Matrix tailored to your organization.
- Align CRM, technology, and CX strategies to support relationship growth.
Module 7 - Customer First Culture
Great customer experiences start with engaged employees. Learn how to build a culture that prioritizes customers while empowering your team to deliver on your brand promise. You’ll explore how to translate values into consistent behaviors using frameworks like SHAPE to develop strong habits and a culture of service excellence.
- Understand the connection between employee experience and customer experience.
- Develop habits and behaviors that support a customer-first culture using the SHAPE framework.
- Create an AI-powered employee engagement project to bring your culture to life.
Module 8 - Navigating Politics of Change
Driving customer experience transformation requires strong leadership and influence. In this module, you’ll bring everything together – connecting CX to business drivers, ROI, and operational execution while building the skills to communicate effectively with the C-suite. You’ll also complete your PASSION Leadership Assessment and Workbook to strengthen your ability to lead with purpose, clarity, and impact. And gain access to the AI CX Coach – your own 24/7 mentor!
- Connect customer experience initiatives to business drivers, ROI, and operational success.
- Build and deliver an executive CX presentation to influence leadership and drive adoption.
- Leverage AI tools like the CX Coach to strengthen your strategy, impact, and PASSION action planning.
Capstone Project: Your Customer Experience Strategic Plan
The program culminates in your own Customer Experience Strategic Plan, developed throughout the course. By integrating your learning across all modules, you’ll create a comprehensive roadmap to operationalize customer experience within your organization.
You’ll leave with a complete Customer Experience Portfolio – equipped with practical tools, strategies, and insights to lead meaningful, lasting change.
Program Instructors & Content Experts
Carol Buehrens - Faculty Chair
Carol is a leading Customer Experience (CX) strategist, author, and educator, and the author of “Happy RAVING Customers! 6 Steps to Grow Your Business with Customer Experience”, “Customer Experience - PLAN IT. DO IT. LOVE IT!: The CX Playbook & Planner”, “Creative Workshops with AI: Engaging Business Teams in Dynamic Workshops Using Artificial Intelligence”, and “The Leading H.E.A.R.T. – Human First. AI Smart.”
With over 30 years of experience, she has designed and transformed customer experiences for major organizations including Liberty Mutual, Northrop, McDonnell-Douglas, Bechtel, GE, Mercury Marine, and ICW Group Insurance Companies.
Carol’s passion for advancing customer experience has earned her numerous accolades, including the prestigious “CX Innovation Award” from the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), the ICW Group CEO Award, and the Liberty Mutual Star Award. She has also been recognized as one of the World’s Top 30 Customer Service Professionals.
A Founding Member and Expert Panel Member of the international Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), Carol is widely respected for her ability to connect strategy, empathy, and innovation – helping organizations build customer-first cultures and deliver meaningful, measurable results.
Michael Truett
Michael is known for creating, improving and executing Collaborative Design Thinking sessions and Customer Experience frameworks across diverse industries (Media, Streaming Services, Ed Tech, Health & Wellness, SaaS, PaaS) at different stages of growth - early-stage start-ups, seasoned companies looking to transform, high growth and declining businesses.
His experience ranges from Professor, Board Member, Keynote Speaker to leading Global Business Transformation (B2B, B2C, B2B2C), Business Development/Launch Strategy, Customer Experience, Customer Success, Customer Engagement, Customer Retention, Customer Service, Lifecycle Management and AI Transformation at companies like Spotify, The New York Times, Dow Jones, Tech start-ups and Telecom providers globally.
Erich Dietz
JP Saini
What others say about the CX 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".