Maddie Rideout

            Madeline Rideout

ADPR 5910

2/14/2012

Spector, R., & McCarthy, P. D. (2005). The Nordstrom way to customer service excellence: a handbook for implementing great service in your organization. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

The Nordstrom Way

“The Nordstrom Way” is an example of what any aspiring great business can learn from a store focused solely on one thing, the customer. The founding family believes you need to be humble in order to do service, a word one would rarely hear in a business.  They have earned their renowned reputation through their excellent customer service practices. “The Nordstrom Way” describes its principles as the inverted pyramid. The book is divided into three parts: What Managers Can Do, What Supervisors Can Do, and What Employees Can Do to Create Nordstrom Style Service.

 Part one looks at how managers can create an identifiable culture.  They spread the culture of service throughout the organization and to all new employees.   Starting by rewarding outstanding acts of customer service. This serves as reminders of the level of service the other employees should aspire.  Another example of how Nordstrom’s managers value their employee is that they promote from within.  Nearly all corporate positions come from employee’s who started on the sales floor.

Part two teaches how supervisors create an atmosphere. Starting with their #1 strategy, hire the smile.  Nordstrom believes that they can train excellent sales people but they cannot train someone to be nice. This allows employees to learn the entire system from the bottom up. That is why they focus hiring on genuinely nice people with the value for customer service.

Finally part three details those giving customer service, including maintaining personal relationships as well as encouraging teamwork. Nordstrom employees believe they are not just selling a men’s suit they are selling a relationship.  

The Nordstrom way offers an excellent approach to management by promoting employees from within.  As we learned in class about Mary Follet’s Collaborative Management Theory which focusing on leaders being born naturally in a group. I think Nordstrom focuses on this theory especially by promoting from within looking at which employees truly stand out as leaders within their coworkers.

Another aspect of the book in regards to management practice is how Nordstrom keeps its employees motivated.  By using commission-based salaries and achievement rewards Nordstrom continuously keeps employees driven to achieve the highest of standards.  This practice follows closely with the Hawthorne Studies of Elton Mayo; by motivating their employees by singling tem out and creating a strong relationship between managers and workers.

Although The Nordstrom Way offers a great approach to setting customer service standards and motivation to it’s employees, not every company can implement it.  Many businesses across the board would go bankrupt by simply going to the extremes to please customers as Nordstrom does.  The truth is that Nordstrom has succeeded by serving people who are willing to pay extra for excellent service. The other flaw in the Nordstrom method is the reality of competition in the work place that could potentially turn negative, and sometimes unrealistic expectations for employees.

Public Relations students could more certainly benefit from reading The Nordstrom Way. Great customer service is public relations. Public relations use customer service to build loyalty with their clients. Especially in these economic times it is even more important for public relations companies to focus on keeping customers than gaining a new ones. Public relations is all about dealing with the public, so by using customer service companies are creating a better more positive image for themselves. It’s important for public relations students to learn the ins and outs of good costumer service as it provides to public relations.