An Interview with Principal Customer Experience Strategist, Nita Sporseen

Earlier this year, Nita Sporseen, Bixal’s principal customer experience (CX) strategist, authored our first ever CX white paper, exploring the transformative power of collaborative cross-functional teams. As a key leader in the field, Nita’s prominent role in championing CX has opened doors for many organizations and individuals within Bixal and beyond.

With a focus on elevating existing CX practices and cultivating new ones, Nita collaborates closely with clients to prioritize strategic initiatives and forge a plan for tactical implementation. The impact of her work enables organizations to develop a deep understanding of their customers and establish sustainable CX practices that resonate with their diverse audiences.

In our latest Bixaler Spotlight, Nita shares insights into her journey, addresses common misconceptions surrounding CX, and highlights the dynamic evolution of the field.

How did you begin your journey in supporting customer experience practices?

After graduating from Whitworth University in 2009 with a degree in communication, I found myself facing a challenging job market. At that time, I started working in the finance industry at a local credit union.

It was a position I had never envisioned myself taking, but also an incredible opportunity to discover a passion for the emerging field of CX. While I started out working on process design and developing training and knowledge management resources for our contact center teams, I became increasingly curious about how CX could transform our organization if we had a wider purview.

Then one day, my director and I were given the opportunity to tackle CX for the entire organization. We embraced the challenge, creating an enterprise CX program from scratch. We developed a comprehensive voice of the customer (VOC) program and carefully navigated where the user experience (UX) practice belonged in our organizational structure. We embedded CX and UX into organizational efforts large and small, including a major digital transformation initiative.

One of the most critical things I learned about CX along the way is that it is both powerful and disruptive, requiring intentional and masterful change management. With that in mind, I decided to further my education by pursuing an organizational leadership degree at Gonzaga University. I graduated in 2020 and joined Bixal shortly after.

What kinds of projects do you oversee as one of Bixal’s customer experience strategists?

Much of what I do involves consulting with federal agencies as part of our contract work. We help these clients— most of whom are new to CX— establish or mature their practices. Our team assesses their current state, prioritizes their focuses from a practice-building standpoint, and marries that with a roadmap for tactical CX initiatives to help them build momentum and demonstrate the value of customer research and human-centered design.

In addition to my work on contracts, I’ve been able to contribute to the CX community through thought leadership, focusing on the crucial aspect of CX culture building.

“It has been incredibly rewarding to share insights with others in the field and empower them with ideas and tools for creating customer-centric cultures within their organizations.”

What type of impact does your work have on organizations and our federal partners?

One of the most important aspects of establishing effective CX is developing customer understanding and standing up the voice of the customer (VOC) tools and processes that allow you to track CX impact longitudinally. Our clients are often seeking clarity about what kinds of CX initiatives they should be prioritizing, how to go about them practically, and how to ensure they can track and share the value of their work over time. VOC serves as a foundation for customer understanding, planning, and measurement, so it’s often an early focus when we work with clients to establish their practices.

However, there’s plenty more to CX practice building than just VOC, and it’s important to us that we do the research with our clients to understand their current state and cocreate their CX vision, objectives, and strategy. We help our clients consider CX at various levels of zoom, from organizational structure all the way down to frameworks, tools, and processes, and we tailor an approach to mature and scale their CX practice in their environment.

Can you think of a project highlight that you’re most proud of?

One of our most significant accomplishments for a client was establishing a network of CX champions spanning all their business units. This was a transformative process, as we worked to bridge relationships among groups that were typically siloed.

Although it required a substantial investment of time and energy, our team was determined to cultivate an environment where individuals could genuinely engage and embrace vulnerability. This allowed for open critique and candid discussions about what was and wasn’t working, enabling a pivotal shift towards a more effective and impactful CX approach.

Additionally, we undertook a service blueprinting project to gain a comprehensive understanding of how our client’s customers interacted with their website. Through this process, we were able to demonstrate that the pain points their customers—and employees—were experiencing weren’t simply a result of surface level design choices but were a symptom of a deeper issue, a lack of coordination among the groups managing their site. Siloed ownership and misalignment were creating disjointed experiences rife with navigation challenges and inconsistencies. Our report sparked critical conversations among groups who had long been happy to act independently about how to develop partnerships, improve alignment, and develop shared understanding and standards, paving the way for a more seamless and customer-centric digital journey.

In 2024, what are you looking forward to in the world of CX?

We have made real progress in the realm of CX this year, driving innovation and positive impact. In March, we published our first CX white paper, which sheds light on the challenges faced by CX teams despite guidance from the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) and directives from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

In our ongoing consulting work with a current client, we aim to establish a solid CX foundation that allows for sustained momentum and continued growth in maturity. Other Bixalers and partners have achieved great success on a tactical level, and our strategy focused CX team is actively exploring lessons learned and looking ahead to the future. By embracing a strategic mindset, we ensure that our work makes a lasting impact and paves the way for enduring success.

In the year ahead, I’m looking forward to contributing more towards Bixal’s thought leadership. By actively exploring and sharing our learnings, we aim to advance the CX field and drive meaningful change within government agencies. Additionally, we’re dedicated to refining Bixal’s methodologies and ensuring our practice areas remain firmly grounded in evidence-based approaches.

About Nita

Nita holds several certifications including the Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) from the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), the CX Foundations certification from Forrester, and the VOC Professional from MaritzCX. Nita's dedication to shaping transformative CX experiences and her commitment to fostering an educational outlook on the field make her an exceptional component to the Bixal team. We are so proud of her continued leadership.

Download the full Transforming Customer Experience in Government: A Roadmap for Success white paper to explore the transformative power of collaborative cross-functional teams.

Digital marketing strategist, John Kregler, contributed to the writing of this article.