Keywords

1 Introduction

Traditionally, the Customer eXperience (CX) concept was related to marketing and Service Sciences. However, the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community is showing a growing interest on CX. Following this trend, we are working for almost two decades on Usability and User eXperience (UX), but lately we are also focusing on CX.

Most of our work is based on the ISO 9241 standard definitions on usability and UX [1]:

  • Usability: “extent to which a system, product or service can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use”,

  • UX: “user’s perceptions and responses that result from the use and/or anticipated use of a system, product or service”.

It worth highlighting that both definitions refer not only to (interactive) software systems, but also to products and services. Usability focuses on effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction when achieving specific goals. It is generally agreed that UX extends the usability concept, referring to all user’s perceptions and responses when using (or even intend to use) a system, product or service. We think that CX extends the UX concept (and consequently the usability concept), as it examines the whole customer journey and experiences with several systems, products or services that a company offers, instead of focusing on a single one.

There is still no agreement on a unique UX definition; agreeing on a unique CX definition is even harder, as the CX concept is much more complex than the UX one. Laming and Mason think that CX includes “the physical and emotional experiences occurring through the interactions with the product and/or service offering of a brand from point of first direct, conscious contact, through the total journey to the post-consumption stage” [2].

CX has a highly interdisciplinary nature. Our approach on CX comes from HCI; we think that CX may be the bridge between HCI and Service Science [3,4,5]. CX is developed through a sequence of “touchpoints” (interactions) between the customer and the company (or companies) that offer the product/system/service [6, 7]. Many of these are based on interactives software systems and digital products. Moreover, CX in one touchpoint usually influence customers’ perception in other touchpoints. That is why we think CS students need at least some CX knowledge.

We are teaching HCI for almost two decades, at undergraduate and graduate level, mainly for Computer Science (CS) students. UX is a main topic in all our courses and we are very well aware that including CX as topic in HCI courses is a necessity. We started teaching CX as optional course at graduate and undergraduate level in Chile, in 2018. We designed the course based on our research and teaching experience, feedback from industry, and from our alumni. The holistic CX approach proved to be a necessity especially in a diploma program that we are teaching since 2015, a program that brings together professional of very different background: CS, Design, Psychology, Architecture, Engineering etc.

The paper presents a comparative study on students’ perception on CX; it is a follow-up study that continues our previous work [8]. Our 2019 survey included students from Chile, Spain, Romania, Colombia and Argentina, enrolled in CS and Law programs. Section 2 describes the survey that we made. Section 3 discusses the results and compares them with our previous findings. Section 4 highlights conclusions and future work.

2 The Survey

We made an exploratory study regarding students’ perception on CX in 2018 [8]. Our goal was to assess Computer Science students’ perception on CX. We also tried to compare their opinion with the opinion of students from other fields of study: Tourism, Medical Technology, Law, and Civil Engineering.

We applied a specific questionnaire that we developed iteratively. The questionnaire was first validated through a pilot study, with approximately 20 respondents. It was then applied to 202 students, from Chile, Romania and Spain in 2018 [8]. We applied the same questionnaire in 2019, to 199 students from Chile, Romania, Colombia, Argentina and Spain. The questionnaire is presented in Table 1.

Table 1. The questionnaire.
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We focused the questionnaire on two main areas: (1) the perception of the CX concept and its relevance, and (2) topics that a CX course should include. Students’ perception on CX relevance was assessed through three questions:

  • How difficult it is to identify their customers (P1),

  • How important their customers’ experience is (P2),

  • How important it is an explicit approach to CX in the curricula (P3).

The proposed topics for a CX course were:

  • Products/systems/services that students will develop/offer as professionals (T1),

  • Costumers of the products/systems/services they will develop/offer (T2),

  • Customers’ needs (T3),

  • CX design (T4),

  • CX evaluation (T5),

  • Company – customers relationship (T6),

  • CX importance for the company’s success (T7).

All the above mentioned items were evaluated on a Likert scale with 5 levels (1 - Very little important, 5 – Very important). Two open questions included in the questionnaire were particularly important as qualitative assessment instruments: (1) what CX related topics include the current curricula (if includes any), and (2) CX related aspects that students would like to highlight.

3 Results and Discussion

3.1 Students’ Background

We collected valid data from 199 students, from:

  • Chile: 99 students, 49.7%,

  • Romania: 53 students, 26.6%,

  • Colombia: 21 students, 10.6%,

  • Argentina: 17 students, 8.5%,

  • Spain: 9 students, 4.5%.

Students voluntarily participated in the experiment; we did not follow a sampling procedure. Moreover, Chilean students’ participation was lower than expected, due to the social crisis that occurred in October 2019. There is why we couldn’t collect data from Tourism and Medical Technology students, as we did in 2018. The field study covered in all countries excepting Romania was CS. We managed to also cover Law with a significant number of students, in Chile (78 students) and Romania (53 students).

As students were in the final part of their studies, 72 out of 199 students (36.2%) are working and studying in the same time. Students’ distribution by field of study was as follows:

  • Law: 131 students, 65.8%,

  • CS: 68 students, 34.2%.

As in 2018, gender distribution was relatively balanced, however males were predominant in CS programs:

  • Males: 101 students, 50.8%,

  • Females: 94 students, 47.2%,

  • 4 students did not revealed/identified their gender (2.0%).

Similarly to the 2018 survey, the predominant age group was 21 to 25. In 2019 the age distribution was as follows:

  • 20 y/o or less: 17 students (8.5%),

  • 21 to 25 y/o: 142 students (71.4%),

  • 26 to 30 y/o: 20 students (10.1%),

  • Over 30 y/o: 20 students (10.1%).

No CX induction was made prior to the survey, and no CX definition was given to respondents. Students answered the survey based only on their specific (field related) and general knowledge. None of the students was previously enrolled in a CX course. That is why we think the survey results’ express students’ unbiased perception. The number of participants was unbalanced, and the results cannot be generalized.

3.2 Quantitative Results

Table 2 synthetizes the main quantitative results of the survey, the average scores of students’ perceptions on CX relevance (P1, P2, P3), and on CX topics in a CX course (T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7).

Table 2. Survey’s quantitative results. Averages perceptions on CX, and on topics’ relevance in a CX course.
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Item P1 (how difficult it is to identify their customers) got the lowest averages in all cases. P1 got the lowest score in the case of Romanian law students, but got one of the highest scores in the case of the Chilean Law students; 8 of the 10 items got lower score from Romanian Law students than from their Chilean fellows. Almost all items scored better for Chilean and Colombian CS students.

Table 3 synthetizes the results of the surveys done in 2018 and 2019. Results are very similar. In both cases the major difficulty seems to be identifying customers. All other items got remarkably good scores, over 4.0 (out of 5.0).

Table 3. Averages perceptions on CX, and on topics’ relevance in a CX course. A comparison between the 2018 and 2019 surveys.
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We used the Kolmogorow-Smirnow K-S test (using p-value ≤ 0.05 as decision rule), to check the hypothesis:

  • H0: the variable has a normal distribution,

  • H1: the variable does not have a normal distribution.

Table 4 shows that none of the variables have a normal distribution. That is why we used nonparametric statistic tests to analyze data. In all tests p-value ≤ 0.05 was used as decision rule.

Table 4. Kolmogorow-Smirnow K-S test for checking a normal distribution.
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We performed Spearman ρ tests to check the hypothesis:

  • H0: ρ = 0, the items P(T)m and P(Tn) are independent,

  • H1: ρ ≠ 0, the items P(T)m and P(Tn) are dependent.

As Table 5 shows, item P1 (how difficult it is to identify your customers) is independent of all other items. It looks like a certain disconnection between how students identify their customers and students’ perception on all other assessed CX aspects. All other items are (very) weakly to strongly dependent. The strongest correlations occur between:

Table 5. Spearman ρ test for P and T items.
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  • T1 and T2: when students find easy to identify the products/systems/services they will develop/offer as professionals, they also find easy to identify the customers of those products/systems/services,

  • T2 and T3: when students find easy to identify the customers of the products/systems/services they will develop/offer, they also find easy their customers’ needs.

We used the Mann-Whitney U test to check the hypothesis:

  • H0: there are no significant differences between the perception of students by field of study,

  • H1: there are significant differences between the perception of students by field of study.

As Table 6 indicates, there are significant differences related to the field of study only regarding T4, the perceived relevance of CX design.

Table 6. Mann–Whitney U tests by students’ field of study.
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We used the Kruskal–Wallis H tests to check the hypothesis:

  • H0: there are no significant differences between the perception of students from different countries,

  • H1: there are significant differences between the perception of students from different countries.

As Table 7 indicates, there are significant differences by countries the field of study regarding several items: P1 (the perceived difficulty in identifying their customers), T1 (the perceived relevance of the products/systems/services they will develop/offer as professionals), T2 (the perceived relevance of the customer of their products/systems/services), T4 (the perceived relevance of CX design), and T5 (the perceived relevance of CX evaluation).

Table 7. Kruskal–Wallis H tests by countries.
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We used the Kruskal–Wallis H tests to check the hypothesis:

  • H0: there are no significant differences between the perception of students belonging to different age groups,

  • H1: there are significant differences between the perception of students belonging to different age groups.

As Table 8 indicates, there are no significant differences by age group in none of the 10 items.

Table 8. Kruskal–Wallis H tests by age group.
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We used the Kruskal–Wallis H tests to check the hypothesis:

  • H0: there are no significant differences between the perception of students by gender,

  • H1: there are significant differences between the perception of students by gender.

As Table 9 indicates, there are significant differences by gender regarding only P2 (the perceived importance of customers’ experience).

Table 9. Kruskal–Wallis H tests by gender.
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We used the Mann-Whitney U test to check the hypothesis:

  • H0: there are no significant differences between the perception of students that are working and studying, and the ones that are only studying,

  • H1: there are significant differences between the perception of students that are working and studying, and the ones that are only studying.

As Table 10 indicates, there are no significant differences related to the employment status regarding none of the 10 items.

Table 10. Mann–Whitney U tests if students are working or not.
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Students’ opinions are rather similar. Significant differences occur in few cases. Most of the differences are related to the country of residence of the students. However, we do not have enough evidence to suspect cultural-related differences.

3.3 Qualitative Results

All students were able to identify the products/systems/services they think they will develop/offer as professionals. However, they are not really sure if their curricula include CX related topics. Even when they are enrolled in the same program, and therefore they have similar background, their perception on the topics that CX includes is variable. This is consistent with the results of our 2018 study [8].

CS students indicated a broad range of CX related topics: HCI, Usability (Engineering), User Interfaces, Requirements Engineering, Software Engineering, Software Quality, Software Design, and Accessibility. It seems that they relating CX with HCI, UX and usability. They are aware of the impact that software quality attributes (and in particular usability) have on CX. They are also aware that the whole process of developing interactive software systems has an impact on users as customers. Topics that CS students indicate in 2019 are more diverse that in our 2018 study. That is probably because the 2018 involved only students from Chile, Spain and Romania. Additionally, in 2019 the survey involved students from Colombia and Argentina.

Law students are also indicating a broader range of topics than in 2018. As in 2018, Civil Law is mentioned, but many other topics are highlighted: Commercial Law, Financial Law, Economic Law, Management, Economy, Customers Rights, Law Education, Taxes Regulations, Professional Ethics, and Litigation. That is probably because the 2018 survey included only 26 Law Romanian students; the 2019 survey included 131 Law students, from Romania and Chile.

As in 2018, very few students answered the open question regarding CX related aspects that they would like to highlight:

  • Some CS students referred to customers’ opinion, digital marketing, the software developer relationship with the customer, and the creation of postgraduate programs in CX; topics are quite different of those indicated in the 2018 survey, probably because the 2019 survey included CS students from Colombia and Argentina, beside Chile and Spain.

  • Some Law students referred to customers’ rights, the importance of being correctly informed as customer; topics are recurrent in both Chile and Romania, and were also indicated in the 2018 survey.

As in the previous survey, students highlighted CX related issues based on their background/field of study. All suggested topics worth to be attended in a CX course.

4 Conclusions and Future Work

We consider CX a holistic, interdisciplinary concept, that extends UX, focusing on customer’s (cumulative) experience when interacting with all systems, products and services that a company offers. As many of these interactions involve interactive software systems and digital products, the increasing interest on CX from the HCI community make a lot of sense. Actually, CX may build a bridge between HCI and Service Science.

Teaching HCI and UX for years, we noticed an increasing demand on forming CX professionals. That is why we are teaching a CX optional course for CS graduate and undergraduate students since 2018. An exploratory study that we have done in 2018 showed that students of several programs (CS, Law, Tourism, Medical Technology, and Civil Engineering) and countries (Chile, Spain and Romania) are aware of the CX (and related topics) importance.

We conducted a similar survey in 2019. This time it involves fewer fields of study (CS and Law), but more countries (Chile, Spain, Romania, Colombia and Argentina). The 2019 survey led to similar results as the one that we have done in 2018. They both confirmed the students’ awareness of the importance of CX, and the importance of a CX course. Studies’ quantitative and qualitative findings help us validating the CX course structure and content.

Applying the survey in Chile in 2019 was particularly difficult. As future work, we would like to see if the survey lead to similar results for students from other fields, universities, and countries.