Internet Learning Volume 5, Number 1, Fall 2016/Winter 2017 | Page 27

Internet Learning
to view the CLSER website while taking
a survey.
Survey Design
The sample represented CLSER
University of Phoenix doctoral
chair customer affiliates furnished
from the research chair. Affiliates
have editing capabilities such as
posting a biography, adding a blog, or
in gaining access to other website areas
not for public consumption. According
to Riffe, Lacy, and Fico (2005), “the value
of research using a convenient sample
should not be diminished” (p. 102).
Affiliates were asked if they believed
that CLSER website perceived
messages of promises of research and
publishing assistance were adequately
kept. Secondly, they were asked about
the degree to whether the CLSER as a
department could assist them in meeting
their scholarly and professional development
needs, via a SurveyMonkey
survey. The survey also garnered the
persona of the customer. The survey was
sent to 121 affiliates (the total number of
doctoral chairs that had registered with
the site) via an email link inside a CLS-
ER research chair September 23, 2015
welcome message. Based on the SurveyMonkey
design no participant could
be allowed to take the survey a second
time from the same Internet Protocol
(IP) address. A total of 23 affiliates responded,
an approximately 20 percent
response rate. A second SurveyMonkey
survey was targeted to CLSER website
stakeholders to determine whether they
had CX theory knowledge and whether
that knowledge was purposefully built
into the site design. Two were sent and
two responded.
According to Joely Gardner,
Ph.D. and CEO of Human Factors Research,
the best method to measure
customer experience is to, “Look at factors
relevant to your customers” (as cited
in Bean, 2015, p. 27). “The more you
understand as to what matters to your
customers’ interactions with your business,
the more opportunities you will
find to make the customer experience
better” (Bean, 2015, p. 28). When measuring
customer experience set aside
customer retention or return on investment
(ROI).
Operationalizing Personas
Customer personas for this study
were operationalized as follows.
The persona is how the doctoral
chair and student see themselves as
academicians and how others might
perceive them in this role. Persona represents
the personality often based on
emotion of the types of customers that
represent a company’s products and
services (Miaskiewicz & Kozer, 2011).
For this study, three personas of doctoral
chairs and students were operationalized.
Persona A are those CLSER affiliate
chairs who indicated they work as a
full-time academician in the discipline
of their doctoral degree and have published
a peer reviewed scholarly article.
They typically do not need as much
support in terms of understanding the
research and publication process. Per-
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