CXPA Partners Globally with Field Bell Institute to Offer Education in Customer Science
Announcement posted by Field Bell Institute 22 Oct 2026
SYDNEY, MELBOURNE, October 22, 2026 -- Headquartered in Minneapolis with a unified global network across 78 countries, the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) has announced a strategic relationship with Australia's Field Bell Institute - a provider of MBA level training to marketing, customer experience, and technology professionals.
The collaboration aims to help members operate with more effectiveness and influence, expanding the association's remit to foster professional maturity.
"This is such a natural build on conversations that CXPA has been having for some time," said its CEO, Greg Melia (pictured left). "Our goal is to support members into the most meaningful and effective careers possible. To do that, we need to ensure their access to the very best available professional development. This is part of that commitment."
For Ben Phillips, a London-based graduate who championed the collaboration, it's very welcome news.
"This announcement is important because it provides the opportunity to immerse yourself in Masters-level customer management science, leading ultimately to more grounded and successful applications in the real world."
Colliding Street Smarts and Academic Integrity
For the Field Bell Institute, customer experience practitioners represent a growing part of its student body alongside marketing leaders, digital teams, and marketing technology (MarTech) talent.
The customer base is every company's most valuable economic asset, and naturally, those well educated in its management become important to employers. Through its CPD accredited curriculum, Field Bell Institute focusses on what it calls, "the advanced fundamentals" of marketing and customer science, spanning customer economics, evidence-based managerial practice, and applied technology.
That order is important. It contrasts with much of the industry where popular thinking and practice originates from technology interests and unreliable measurement concepts.
It's this commitment to independence and rigour that the CXPA values.
The association also recognized that working professionals need to balance structured, high-quality learning with flexibility, so the online format of the Mini MBA in Customering, together with its cohort-based Q&A, was a ready-made fit.
The program is accredited at MBA level for continuing professional development and applies a simple 3-layer model to its syllabus structure.
- Asset: Students learn the defining characteristics of the customer base as an asset, from the history of trade to the marketing method, and the repeating scientific laws that guide customer practice.
- System: With that anatomy is understood, students' progress to operational modules, the practical intersection of brand and service effects, applied technology, and the supporting evidence.
- Measurement: Finally, building on both the anatomy of the asset and its system principles, they learn about calibrated measurement, budgeting, and reporting methods.
"We have a dual responsibility," said Aarron Spinley, who teaches the Mini MBA in Customering. "We must ensure that students learn the subject properly, and on the literature, without influence or narratives from anything else.
Then, to teach it in an applied way for the real world, so technology is certainly present right throughout, including AI, but is restored to the role of tool - not master. That's more important than ever."
Expanded Learning
Melia, again. "There is nothing that is happening today that is not challenging for CX professionals. They are being asked to up their game. They're being asked to bring more evidence, and they're having to test assumptions, present better business cases, and provide more integrated thinking. That's why we need to level-up the education that we bring to the table".
Students access the program through 10 structured lectures and an associated readings program, delivered over 12 weeks. The weekly time commitment of between 3 to 4 hours is designed so that working students don't have to press pause on their career to study at MBA level.
Alumni can already be found in the US, UK, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
The parties established the agreement ahead of the 2027 intakes, which run from April and September each year, and the CXPA is cross crediting the program toward its own CCXP certification renewal.
Meanwhile, Field Bell Institute is 2027 planning for an 'Advanced Certificate in Systemic Change Practice', and an in-person program for customer decisioning executives in complex consumer industries like banking and finance, telecommunications, and energy; further expanding critical skills development in the marketing, customer, and technology vocations.
For more information:
Customer Experience Professionals Association
Minneapolis, United States
cxpaglobal.org
Field Bell Institute
Melbourne, Australia
fieldbell.co