The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: The Handbook For Becoming the "Nordstrom" of Your Industry

241 Pages·2012·1.326 MB·English

by  Robert Spector, Patrick D. McCarthy

T H E
NORDSTROM

WAY
to
CUSTOMER SERVICE
EXCELLENCE
THE HANDBOOK FOR BECOMING THE
“NORDSTROM” OF YOUR INDUSTRY

SECOND EDITION
ROBERT SPECTOR
PATRICK McCARTHY
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Copyright © 2012 by Robert Spector and Patrick McCarthy. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
Phase III—Applications: How to Become the Nordstrom of Your Industry Copyright © Robert Spector Consulting. All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Spector, Robert, 1947–
The Nordstrom way to customer service excellence : the handbook for becoming the “Nordstrom” of your industry /
Robert Spector, Patrick McCarthy. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-118-07667-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-22266-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-23653-6 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-24309-1 (ebk)
1. Customer services—United States—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Nordstrom (Firm)—Management.
3. Department stores—United States—Management. I. McCarthy, Patrick D. II. Title.
HF5415.5.S626785 2012
658.8(cid:2)12—dc23 2011039735
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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In loving memory of my parents,
Fred and Florence Spector,
who taught me The Spector Way:
Work hard, be good, do well.
R. S.
In memory of Ray Black,
who fi rst showed me The Nordstrom Way
P. McC.
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Contents
Introduction vi
PHASE I: Culture 1
1 Tell the Story: How Nordstrom Became Nordstrom 3
2 Hire With Care: Finding the Right Fit for the Culture 25
3 Nurture the Nordie: Mentor, Support, Praise,
Recognize, and Reward 59
4 Empower Entrepreneurs to Own the Customer Experience 79
5 Compensate According to Results 103
6 Communication and Teamwork: We’re All in
the Customer Service Department 115
7 Citizen Nordstrom: Doing Well, Doing Good 133
PHASE II: Experience 143
8 Create an Inviting Place: Brick-and-Mortar Still Matters 145
9 Touchpoints: Multichannel Customer Service 165
10 The Sale Is Never Over: Establish, Nurture, and
Sustain Long-Term Relationships With Your Customers 181
PHASE III: Applications: How to Become the
Nordstrom of Y our Industry 195
Acknowledgments 215
Index 219
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Introduction
T
his is not a book about selling shoes or clothes or cosmetics or
jewelry.
This is a book about creating a corporate culture that encourages,
motivates, and compensates your employees to consistently deliver a
sup erior customer service experience for your customers.
Customer service is like the weather. Everybody talks about it but
nobody (well, almost nobody) does anything about it.
And yet each one of us is an expert on customer service. At one
point or another during the course of our day, we are all customers.
We know good service when we see it, and we know bad service
when we see it. You don’t have to read a book to have it explained
to you.
Picture a metaphorical customer service counter. On one side of the
customer service counter is you, the customer. You know exactly what
your expectations are: a good product or service at a fair price. If there’s
a problem, you want it taken care of as quickly, seamlessly, and pain-
lessly as possible. Simple stuff . We all know this.
So, then, why is good customer service so rare?
Because a funny thing happens to people when they are on
the other side of the customer service counter or the front desk or the
reception area or on the the other end of the telephone or Internet—
when they are in the position of having to give service as opposed to
receiving service. Most often, their only concerns are the rules, the
process, the manual, the bureaucracy, the way it’s always been done.
It is as if they hit the “delete” button on their customer service memory.
They forget about the Golden Rule, about empathy, about the customer.
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Introduction
You’ve heard all the excuses: “Sorry, that’s against our policy.” “Sorry,
we have a rule against that.” “Sorry, my manager’s off today. Can I get
an answer to you next week?”
We customers don’t ask for much. We want to be taken care of. We
want to do business with a company that’s going to make our life
easier. Most companies, large and small, are based on a business model
that is set up to make life easier for the company, not for the cus-
tomer. That’s where Nordstrom comes in. Nordstrom people will
do whatever it takes (within reason, of course) to take care of the
customer.
“We don’t determine what good service is; the customer does,”
wrote Blake, Peter, and Erik Nordstrom in the employee newsletter,
Loop. “When you hear the many amazing customer service stories
taking place on our selling fl oor, the one thing they share in common is
a spirit of doing what’s right for the customer. From the sales fl oor to
support, no matter where we work, our challenge is to constantly put
the customer at the center of everything we do. If something is impor-
tant to the customer, fi nd a way to deliver. If it’s not, we need to question
if it’s worth our time and focus.”
Nordstrom urges new employees to be kind. Nordstrom man-
age ment still believes that the Golden Rule has merit. Management
empowers its employees to treat others as they would want to be
treated. Nordstrom believes that great service begins with showing
courtesy to everyone—customers, employees, and vendors.
Becoming the Nordstrom of Your Industry
When The Nordstrom Way was fi rst published in 1995, it struck a chord
with many companies in a variety of industries. Several hundred thou-
sand copies and six iterations later, it continues to serve as an inspira-
tion for many diff erent types of businesses.
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INTRODUCTION
Although more than 110 years old, Nordstrom continues to be the
standard against which other companies and organizations privately
(and often publicly) measure themselves.
Nordstrom has long been a popular subject for study among
authors of customer service books and educators at business gradu-
ate schools such as Harvard and Wharton. Roll Call, the newspaper
of Capitol Hill, once advised press aides for U.S. congressmen to use
the “Nordstrom approach” when trying to sell producers of political
talk shows on the benefi ts of booking their bosses. The New York Times
Magazine once quoted a minister in Bel Air, California, who told his
congregation in a Sunday sermon that Nordstrom “carries out the call
of the gospel in ways more consistent and caring than we sometimes
do in the church.”
In an article in Nashville’s newspaper The Tennessean, a writer called
for local schools to produce a “customer-centric culture,” to create
“the loyalty and enthusiasm that is crucial to participation, funding, and
community pride. The Wal-Mart model is good for some things, but
if it is quality you desire, Nordstrom is the way.”
Businesses of every kind strive to become the “the Nordstrom” of
their industry. Recreational Equipment Inc. has been called “the
Nordstrom of sporting goods stores” and Specialty Foods magazine des-
cribed A Southern Season, a store in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as
“the Nordstrom of specialty food.”
A top broker for Century 21 once told Fast Company, “I want people
to think of me as the Nordstrom of real estate.”
A dean at Fullerton College in California vowed to create “the
Nordstrom of Admissions and Records.”
University of Colorado Hospital installed a baby grand piano
in the lobby and began advertising itself as “The Nordstrom of
Hospitals.”
You can fi nd similar comparisons in yoga videos, offi ce furniture,
public libraries, construction supply distribution, hot tubs, dental offi ces,
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Introduction
pet stores, sex shops, thermal rolls, foundries, workplace giving, doors
and windows, and contract consulting.
I’ve even found “the Nordstrom of garbage collection.” I don’t know
what its return policy is, and I don’t want to fi nd out.
Even Nordstrom uses this metaphor. In describing the company’s
Rack division of clearance stores, Blake Nordstrom once said, “We like
to think that the Rack is the Nordstrom of the discount world.”
So what does it mean to be the Nordstrom of your industry?
It’s not just a smiling face that greets you when you enter the depart-
ment. It’s covering every aspect of the business—the things the cus-
tomers see and the things that they don’t see.
How can an organization create a culture and atmosphere to provide
“Nordstrom-like” service? This book answers those questions and shows
you how to do it.
A Family Business; a Public Company
The old saying about family businesses goes like this: The fi rst gen-
eration builds them, the second generation enjoys them, and the
third gene ration destroys them. No one even bothers to men -
t ion the fourth generation because there are so few businesses that
last that long.
If there was ever a family business that defi es that stereotype, it is
Nordstrom. Technically, Nordstrom is not a family business. It’s been
a publicly traded company for more than four decades—over a third
of the company’s history. The chairman of its board of directors since
2006, Enrique “Rick” Hernandez is not a family member and has
never worked for the company. Hernandez who is president and CEO
of Inter-Con Security Systems, Inc. of Pasadena, California, heads an
outside board that consists of 12 directors, not one of whom has a high
national profi le, but several have impeccable retail credentials.
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