Strategic Alignment for CX and EX: April Ho-Nishimura, onsemi

The Gist

• Strategic alignment vital. CX and EX require top-down, strategic alignment for effective implementation in organizations.
• Crafting employee personas. Beyond CX strategies, constructing employee personas is crucial for understanding and improving their experiences.
• Balancing technology and trust. Effective CX and EX integration demands a balance between leveraging technology and maintaining employee trust.

This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio.

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Dom Nicastro: Hello everyone, Dom Nicastro CMSWire managing editor here and host of CX Decoded. I hope everyone's doing well today. I sure am with this guest. We're going to be catching up today with April Ho-Nishimura, head of one experience at Onsemi, a semiconductor powerhouse. We're going to be chatting today about the intersection of customer and employee experiences, how they can be communicated, implemented effectively within an organization, particularly from the top down, you know, getting really that strategic alignment. But forget about me, let's get to the star of the show. April, how's it going today?

April Ho-Nishimura: Hey, Dom, it's going good. Thanks so much for having me. 

Blending CX and EX: Ho-Nishimura's Unique Journey at Onsemi

Nicastro: Oh, it's a pleasure. And you know, we talked before the recording, and you're walking the walk with customer and employee experience. I mean, literally, you focus on both dynamics and how they can combine for that one experience at your company. I love it. It's a fascinating role to me, you know, April — because we haven't seen — we've heard a lot of talk — let's say that — about how important it is to bring customer experience and employee experience together. But someone who actually has that in their title, essentially, is a fascinating dynamic to me. So I'd love a little background on how you sort of arrived in this role you are in today like. Did you start in CX? Did you start in EX? Like where were you? 

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah,so I love that question. What's interesting is, it's probably my whole career path has been in all different areas, right? Kind of culminating into CX. So prior to joining Onsemi, I was the head of digital customer experience in the chemicals industry, and I had an opportunity to come over to semiconductors. And it was really the vision though, that drew me to Onsemi, you know, the vision of our board and our CEO, that employee and customer experience, they go hand in hand. And it was a concept that I believed in, throughout my whole career. But to your point, I never had an opportunity for a company to think that way. So certainly my background is in CX, but I will say that it's all of that experience from CX that paves the way to combine both disciplines. So I think I'm very blessed to be in the role that I am in. 

Related Article: AI in Customer Experience and Employee Experience: Finding Balance

Onsemi's 'One Experience' Approach: Uniting CX and EX

Nicastro: Yeah,I literally have never heard of someone who actually has that role that actually looks at both of them equally. I've heard a lot of CX leaders discussing that they care about how their contact center agents are performing. And are they feeling good about their jobs? So that's employee experience, right? But they never truly connected the two. So at Onsemi, you have that quote, one experience theme, and you literally call it that. So I would love to know, like the origins of that one experience dynamic. And how Onsemi and your teams have arrived at that?

Ho-Nishimura: Sure. You know, I think historically, when we think about employee experience, it usually fits in with the HR organization. Right? And I think the reason why it's always been separated is HR usually has this approach, a very legalistic approach, right, that the data is really confidential. You can't share it, for example, turnover metrics, there are people that talk about it. But is it really a taboo subject? And I think the way that we started to approach this is once our leadership team really started to understand from the customer side, where we look at personas, and journey mapping, and then the conversation became well employees go through the same thing. 

There are employee personas. And there are countless studies out there right on the org development side of how to develop employee personas. But it was how do you craft and play personas the right way, so that you can look at employee journeys in the same way that we look at customer journeys? Because at the end of the day, it's about how do we retain our employees? How do we get them to want to be here? And how do we grow them to be their best? And you can only do that by really understanding those touchpoints. So really, it's the same process that we use for CX and being able to parlay that into EX. And it was, once we started having those discussions at the leadership level, that the idea really started to catch on, people saw the vision, and then it made sense.

Related Article: The Holistic Equation: Why HX = CX + EX

Employee Personas: Beyond Traditional CX Strategies

Nicastro: I love the term employee personas, we're so used to saying customer personas, customer personas, who are we marketing to? Who are we giving experiences to and to have someone care about employee persona, this is like so awesome. So give me an example of an employee persona. Like I could tell you who the personas are that CMSWire writes to you know, we care about folks like you April pretty much chief customer officers, VP customer experience, so do you have names for these employee personas?

Ho-Nishimura: Oh, absolutely. And you know, I will caveat and say, right, there's tons of ways to do employee personas. And, you know, there's a lot of companies that do them by levels, kind of like what you're saying, right? There's the C-suite, there's managers, there's needed frontline workers. So that's one way to do it. You can also do them by functions, right? If you're looking at your customer facing teams versus more your back office teams. 

But what we thought was important is how do you choose personas that are universal? Meaning that you could find these personas in your executive team, but you could even find them on the front line? So an example might be a learner persona, a learner persona may be somebody that is more focused on building their relationships? Is that concept learned at all? When you look at personas, it's not that every single attribute is only existent within that single persona. But it was really us thinking through what are the outcomes? How does that persona, think about their work? And what did they expect out of their work? What did they expect out of their manager? And what did they expect out of their growth track?

Related Article: The Art of Balancing Employee Experience and Customer Experience

Gathering Employee Insights: Strategies Beyond Surveys

Nicastro: Yeah, and they have to be receptive to giving you this information, too. Right. So was there a lot of one-on-one surveys, like, how do you extract this data from them? 

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, so I think that's a great question. There's multiple ways which you can approach — that you can go either through surveys — or you can take a more concentrated approach. I wouldn't recommend that all companies do this widespread, because it really depends on the level of trust, and the size of the organization you have. And then of course, it goes back to the outcomes, what are the objectives or the outcomes that the company is looking for? So for example, if a company is looking to better build your bench of successors, maybe you start this within your succession plan. So I don't say that there's a universal approach for everybody. But it really starts with what is the end in mind? And where will it make sense to develop these? And how will you use them going forward?

Related Article: CX and EX: How to 'ROX' Your Metrics

Beyond Generic Surveys: Transparency in Employee Feedback

Nicastro: Yeah, I do see a lot of companies that are very generic, right? They, hey, we care about our employees, and they send out like a five question survey that everyone answers and it says, Look, everyone's happy. You know? 

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, I think you have to be careful with things like that. Because without transparency, then employees start to wonder, right? What is my company up to? And I think it's one of the things that a lot of employees are really leery of, because we know that there's data being collected about us in our personal lives. So it's also then bringing that into the workplace, and how are we being transparent with what data is being collected? And how will we be using it? So I think it is a fine line, it is a delicate line.

Related Article: Great CX + EX: The Formula for the Total Experience

Structuring CX and EX: A Collaborative Approach

Nicastro: I want to dial it back a second to the structure of the organizational tree, if you will, in your world, April, because I think a lot of CX leaders, EX leaders that could be listening to this might be like, OK, how do they structure that? Who does April report to? Who's under her? Does she work directly with the CHRO type person? Because when I'm thinking EX, CX. I'm thinking of HR meets CMO. CX meets IT. I'm having all these in my head, functional cross collaboration, job titles, but how do you actually get that done at Onsemi?

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, that's a great question. I think your view and what you're thinking, it's all of the above. So the way that we drive that is my role sits under marketing. So I report to the chief marketing officer. And so we have governance councils where we have representation from each of the functional teams and regions across on the CX and the EX. So we make sure that everyone has a voice in the conversation. But I think where you started with, it really does come to an alignment between the CHRO, the CMO, as well as the CIO. Because for us a big part of tying experiences together, it does have a huge dependency on the technology. Where does the data come from? How do we connect experiences? How easy is it for our employees to conduct business so that we can serve our customers? And so it's that hand in hand between. 

Do we have the right technology and the roadmaps in place? Do we have the right training and development programs for our people who will be executing on those experiences for our customers? And then do we have a common understanding around the data? What is it telling us? And what do we collectively do about it together? Because what we found is that if you're working in silos, then you're not maximizing the efficiency and the dollars that are going towards the experiences we are trying to create.

ROX and ROE: Metrics for CX and EX Success

Nicastro: Yeah, speaking of efficiency in dollars, a lot of people talking about a term ROX, right return on experience or ROE, return on effort. There's a lot of "Rs"-something. Everyone is most familiar with the ROI one on investment but what are some of those metrics April that you are looking at a lot? You're measuring KPIs very closely. I would love to know, the KPIs you look at closely on the CX side and the EX side.

Ho-Nishimura: I think, too, when we think about metrics, we think about them in layers, right? First, you've got your layer of sentiment metrics, which tells you what's happening in the experience. And these are true for both sides, EX and CX are sentiment metrics. 

And then we also think about operational metrics or interaction metrics, which tell you what is happening in that touchpoint, or in that experience. And, you know, there was a great Harvard Business Review article, it was called CPI, the customer performance indicators. And they're the metrics you're not tracking. 

And so on the customer side, it's about what are all the transactions that our customers actually care about, but that businesses probably aren't tracking. And so you can parlay that into the employee side as well. And that would be called something like an EPI, right employee performance indicators. 

What are those transaction or operational touchpoints, those metrics that employees actually care about, or even candidates when a candidate is applying for a job? And how do you start tracking those? And it's the relationship between sentiment. So what is the feedback that you're getting in terms of satisfaction, ease of interaction? How do you compare that against what is happening within the experience, those operational metrics? And then at the end of the day, it becomes what are the outcome metrics to your point, which is where you started, which is the ROI.

So some of the specific ROI things that many, you know CX leaders look at is your customer lifetime value, it's that big end metric. And of course, everyone is always looking at something similar to an NPS. And so we parlay that as well, onto the employee side. So there is an E, LTV, there's an employee lifetime value as well. And then there's an E, NPS. So those are some of the big outcome metrics that we look at. 

But of course, I think at the end of the day, especially on the employee side, everyone is looking at how do we reduce turnover? How do we better retain our employees? How do we deliver this value proposition so that employees come here, because they're working towards a bigger purpose with the company and then at the end, that translates for value for our customers? So that's sort of a snapshot of how there's many layers into the metrics, but I think for the end ROI, we can still look at lifetime value.

One Experience Effort: The Commitment to CX and EX

Nicastro: Yeah, I just think the fact that you have a one experience effort is enough to at least get the employees thinking, OK, this company cares. This company cares about how I'm doing, and not just the bottom line. And when you're getting into those conversations with C-suite boards of directors, things like that, of course, they want to know how sales are looking quarter to quarter, they want to know the bottom line. But are you part of those conversations? April, you and your CMO, you know, sitting at a table?

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, yeah.

Nicastro: Give me a little snapshot of what goes on there. Because they have to be just as excited as you are about the combination of CX and EX.

Ho-Nishimura: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, what, it's important that we bring results. But what I value and I love the conversations that we have with our C-suite, is that it's equally important to how we get those results. Because that's the sustainability of performance of a company. It's not just a one shot thing, hey, let's just make this you know, one number, and it's the end of the day, but it's, it's the longevity of that. And that's how you really start to create a legacy. And so what I value is that our leadership team and our board of directors, they're looking at how do we as Onsemi leave a mark? How do we become a legacy in this space that we're in, especially with all this attention with what's going on with semiconductors, right? We're really trying to work on our value proposition. And we know it starts from the inside out. 

Data-Driven Pivot: CX and EX Synergy Success

Nicastro: Yeah, can you think of an example of an actual example where you took the data from EX and CX, and you kinda like said, hey, you know what, I think we need to pivot a little bit here in this department or that department? Is it something that sticks out? Like the story, the where, man, all of our efforts with this one experience actually turn things around for the better? Is there an example that stands out for you there? 

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, I think one of the probably biggest examples, and I think a lot of companies, this will probably resonate with them, when it comes time to effectively or efficiently resolve customer issues. A lot of that is really dependent upon how fast your internal teams can turn around and answer right but it's not just any answer, it's the right answer. And it's hard to enable that. It requires steady systems, beyond that open communication and then of course, that you've got the right people standing at each of the posts. 

So one of the things we started to look at was response times, how do we get more efficient about the quality of our responses and and the speed in which we do that. And so then internally, we had to come back and we said, you know, what does the data tell us in terms of IT tickets that employees open? Are we seeing a correlation there because we have to understand the pain points of our employees if we expect them to deliver for customers. And so this was really great because this was just a couple of weeks ago, we were on one of our council calls, and we said, let's dig in, let's start to look into this space. So this is where the light bulb started to go off. And we really started to understand that these things correlate if you solve the root cause of the problem, the person really at the end that's gonna benefit is our customer. So that is one area that we have diligently been working on as a team.

Empowered Responses: Focus on Effective Communication

Nicastro: Finding an answer. That's just resonated with me so much, because I'm just thinking of all my jobs I've ever had. And that's the biggest thing that blocks you in your day. It's like, Who do I ask? 

Ho-Nishimura: Absolutely. Anybody, right. And even even in the consumer space, right? Whenever you have to reach out by email and contact a company, you're hoping you're crossing your fingers and hoping that the person that's going to respond to you is empowered, and knows the right answer, versus just brushing you off.

Nicastro: I also think when we're talking about your employees, we need to be a little more specific. I should have asked you this earlier, but Onsemi like, give me the ballpark figure of number of employees that you care about that we're talking about here. 

Ho-Nishimura: Thank you. We have over 33,000 global associates at Onsemi, so it is the whole kit and caboodle that we care about. We care about those experiences from our direct staff, we have a tremendous amount of our workforce that's in our manufacturing plants, as well as our indirect staff, which is all of our management folks that are across the globe.

Nicastro: That is a lot of data to collect for you.

Ho-Nishimura: It is certainly.

Tool Optimization: Streamlining CX and EX Processes

Nicastro: I mean, I think our company has the same number of employees without those, you know, zeros on it, just just the 33 part, you know, but I'm telling you that this resonates with even like a smaller organization too what you're saying because the problems are the same. You think it's easier trying to get an answer with 33 people than it is 33,000? Probably not. Right? It might even be easier with the bigger company because you have maybe some better technology, if you will. But speaking of technology, there's a lot of tools I'm imagining you use, what is your day-to-day tool usage look like? Is it too much? You know, are you always trying to say, hey, you know, we need a little audit here. I'm opening up too many tabs here? Or do you feel like you have a good structure in terms of your EX tools, your CX tools like all that?

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that people will always want more tools. But then the question becomes, how do you declutter all of the tools and the systems that you have to work with. So I think that is something that we have started to focus on. So in terms of how many tools that I have to work with, or my team, I think it's pretty consolidated. I mean, we've got a good pipeline into what we use for analytics. And, of course, certainly we use Excel for some parts of it. But there are a lot more advanced tools that are out there. I think what's important is that you have a good customer feedback platform. And if you can look for a customer feedback platform that also can serve your employee side because then you're just cutting out another vendor that you have to work with. And then you're all of your data can be in one place. The next thing is data visualization. And sometimes your feedback platform administrator isn't going to have the best data visualizer. So you know, it's finding what is that best tool? 

What I also found is, what's important is that internally, we align with what is the company already using? And let's vet that out together, what are the broad use cases that we can use across multiple businesses and functions, just so that we're consistent with how we look at data? Because what's important is now that we've gotten our functional leaders on board and functional teams understanding how to look at the data, well, wouldn't it just be horrible if every time you gotta go look at different dashboards, they're in completely different formats and different measurements. So this is one area to certainly streamline that way, you can really empower your functions to start building their iterations of the data, but you're all using a similar platform with a similar scale.

Vetting Vendors: An Approach to CX and EX Integration

Nicastro: Yeah. Are the vendors doing better? In that sense? I'm sure you're getting a lot of demos and talking to a lot trying to improve things or you have in the past, the vendors doing better in terms of having CX and EX under one roof because obviously that would be ideal.

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, I think there's a lot of them that are starting in this space. But what I found is everyone's got a marketing tactic. And so it's really incumbent upon your CX, EX or your one experience leader to really probe in those questions because a lot of times that demos will show you a sketch or a mock up because they want to land your business. But what you really want to ask for when you're vetting out a vendor in this space is you want to say, look, let's sign an NDA, I'm going to give you some of our data, and I want you to model it live for me because that's the difference between the folks that will tell you yes, we can do it, they'll mock up a picture. But once you get into that relationship, you'll start to see Oh, you mean, you didn't have those capabilities built out, which can be incredibly frustrating. So I do think that vendors are getting better in this space. But like I said, it cannot just be turnkey, the head of the department that's making the decision on the technology really has to know the questions to ask and if you don't know yourself and bring the people from your team, who will ask those questions.

Key Skills for Onsemi's One Experience Team Members

Nicastro: Yeah exactly. I want to talk about skill sets. Now. Your CX EX team, your one experience team, what sort of skill sets? Do you feel that team members within one experience need these days? You know, what are you looking for, if you were writing up a job description for someone to come in, and just crush it on that one experience team?

Ho-Nishimura: First and foremost, individuals have to be learning it all. They have to be curious. I mean because that is the foundation of looking at data and trying to find the story that's sitting within the data. The other thing that I started to share with my team is have pride in your role if you do end up landing on an experienced team, because to me, experience, teams are holistic, meaning you have to understand every function across a business. And not just that, but you also have to understand context, because the data is going to tell you one piece of the story. But you have to be able to build relationships within the functions to truly understand and validate what you're seeing and to ask, why is it this way? Because it's not until you get that extra context where then you can work together to say, do we have the right goal? What goals should it be? And then what are the actions that we should be doing together in order to get to that goal because chances are the action plan around the goal, it's not just going to involve that one function and the experience team. It's going to involve HR or it's going to involve IT. So it's really people it’s got to be in these roles where they want to be collaborators facilitators, again, it goes back to the curiosity, you have to want to hear the other side of the story beyond just what the data is telling you.

Lean Six Sigma and Scrum in CX and EX Strategy

Nicastro: Yeah. And speaking of skill sets, I know you, yourself being a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Certified Scrum Product Owner, you know, how does that weave into your day to day?

Ho-Nishimura: Yeah, I love the question. And yes, it is, as you go along in your career, you never think we're going to use this again later. But I think for me, especially with the Lean Six, Sigma, the background, and the certification, it really taught me this process-minded thinking, it has taught me how to frame up a problem, what are the right questions you need to ask? Where do you get the data? And beyond that, also facilitation? How do you get everybody to come together to move towards a common goal? How do you resolve the issue? And then how do you put a control plan in place to make sure that those results don't backslide? 

So I think that's one of the big things that I took away. And I've learned throughout my career of the company that really I earned my certification from, it was part of the DNA of that company, it was expected that if you became a black belt, that eventually when you progressed on into your career, that you would take those principles of continuous improvement and that thinking into your leadership roles. And that way you could mentor and guide your organization's. So that was one piece, right, understanding the process. But I think the second one is the Certified Scrum Product Owner, it was an opportunity to really learn how do you get the digital stuff done? How does it get prioritized because the process piece is one side, right? 

You fix the process, but sometimes you still need technology to get that extra mile. So that was the next piece of really process and working with Scrum and Agile. And so marrying those two together really becomes the perfect blend. I think it's those two, then it's also the change management piece. So it's understanding all three of how those pieces fit together, really brings together the trifecta of what's needed to be on an experienced team. It's all three pieces that have to work together at the end of the day, it comes down to people, process and technology.

Integrating CX and EX: Starting Points for Leaders

Nicastro: Yeah, exactly. And then finally, I want to just bring this all together. There's so many good data points of so many good anecdotes from allowing us inside your world at Onsemi. I really appreciate it. I'm a CX leader, I'm a VP of customer experience. I think we're not doing enough with employee experience. Where do I even begin?

Ho-Nishimura: Wow. Well, if you want to start the conversation, I think it's first seeking out do you have an employee experience leader or within the company, and sitting down and starting to share the what ifs. And then starting to ask about some of the data, especially since you have that experience from the CX side, start asking, because it starts again with the curiosity. And once you get that EX leader sort of on board and seeing where you're coming from, then it becomes your vision together that you can build. And then the possibilities are endless. But I think it starts again, with the curiosity, bring what you know, and start asking questions, because you want to learn about the other side.

The Evolution of Employee Experience: From HR to Holistic

Nicastro: It's amazing how far we’ve come, isn't it? April, I remember getting a job in the early 2000s. In my employee experience was the HR people giving me my email and my benefits. And I didn't hear from them again. I mean, it's insane how far we've come, right?

Ho-Nishimura: Absolutely. And I think a lot of it has to do with the pandemic, right, a lot of power has been shifted back to employees, which I think is great. Employees are starting to see that, hey, look, the value I bring is significant. And I want to work for an employer that's going to embrace that. And it's going to help me grow, especially now since right. There's a lot of people that can work remotely. And so even more employee experience becomes so much more important. And it's not just about the big tech firms having Ping-Pong table in there and everyone getting free food. It's more about what you value as an employee and everyone values something differently, which goes back to personas.

Insights on CX and EX Fusion

Nicastro: Yeah, you can actually have a good employee experience department outside of the Ping-Pong table, right. It's amazing how you can pull that off, you know. April Ho-Nishimura. I mean, we can't thank you enough for being on CX Decoded. Now, we should call this one CX EX Decoded for real. But hey, listen, I'm gonna give you the final word. Just tell our listeners where they can best track your story. Whether that's LinkedIn or any, any blogs, you're doing Medium, what have you got? Go for it.

Ho-Nishimura: I appreciate that. Well, if anyone wants to connect, or you have questions, you can reach me, of course, April Nishimura on LinkedIn. And I think just follow Onsemi on LinkedIn, and you'll see some of the great things that we're doing.

Nicastro: Excellent. You've been listening to CX Decoded. This is Dom Nicastro. Signing off. April, once again, thank you so much.

Ho-Nishimura: Awesome. Dom, thanks so much. 

Nicastro: Have a good one. 

Ho-Nishimura: You too.

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