I learned to be more sensitive to what was happening around me, to notice what was hot and what was not, to be aware of what worked and what didn't work. In order to run their own business, all of our entrepreneurial salespeople must have that level of awareness.

—Bruce Nordstrom

Awareness is the state or condition of having knowledge and consciousness—two qualities that are essential to creating a memorable service experience.

In his 1950 memoir, founder John W. Nordstrom recalled the very first day of business for his little shoe store, which he opened in 1901 in downtown Seattle with Carl F. Wallin, whom John W. knew from their days in the Klondike during the Alaska Gold Rush. Wallin's previous business experience had been the running of a 10‐foot‐wide shoe repair shop in downtown Seattle. John W. wrote:

Opening day sales totaled $12.50.

What is important about the story of Wallin & Nordstrom's first sale is that John W., without even realizing it, hit on one of the foundations of the Nordstrom Way that continues to this day: Do not let a woman leave the store without selling her a pair of shoes.

Besides that, he established a culture whose cornerstone is: “Do whatever it takes to take care of the customer.” Ever since 1901, the same principle applies because Nordstrom looks for people who demonstrate a keen awareness of the wants, needs, and tastes of each and every individual customer.

John W. was in the store every day, listening to what customers liked and disliked about the quality, fit, and style of the shoes. He would write down that information on a piece of paper and put it into his suit pocket to remind himself of what to have in his store to satisfy his customers and keep them loyal.

On a daily basis, the Nordstrom culture demonstrates, encourages, and reminds every team member in every part of the organization to “put yourself in the shoes of the customer.” The best salespeople have a high level of awareness, combined with curiosity and a desire to help you find just what you're looking for.

Awareness is impossible to achieve without experience. Because they've been there before, seasoned, empathetic employees know how to react to virtually everything that the customer is experiencing or reacting to. Consequently, canny Nordies can recognize (and adjust to) positive and negative signals and cues.

Because they are unencumbered by a lot or rules, Nordstrom salespeople are free to use their awareness and best judgment in each individual customer interaction. Again, this is the shining Nordstrom example of empowerment.

“You learn to live in the gray area at Nordstrom,” said a salesperson. “You must look at each situation with new eyes and make sure you respond to the individual needs of the issue right in front of you instead of applying a cookie‐cutter solution. Living with ambiguity at Nordstrom can be challenging, but in the end it keeps our responses to people and issues very real.”

Imagine hiring employees who are comfortable with ambiguity. These are the kind of people who can evaluate situations and make speedy decisions. Wouldn't you like a whole team of those people?

Betsy Sanders, a former top Nordstrom executive and a former member of the board of directors of Walmart Stores, remembered the day when she was managing a women's apparel department in a Seattle‐area Nordstrom store, and she saw Bruce, John N., and Jim of the third generation coming through the store on their way to a meeting on real estate matters. She noticed that Bruce had a look of consternation on his face. He motioned toward Sanders and pointed to two women who were leaving the store, complaining that, “they were never so disappointed in their lives.” Bruce asked Betsy to find out what had happened.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this is what Nordstrom is all about.’ It's about the chief executive officer about to go into an important real estate meeting and yet still caring about what was happening on the sales floor,” Sanders recalled. “I went over to these women and explained to them that Mr. Nordstrom had overheard what they had said and was very worried that we had disappointed them. They started to laugh. They said, ‘We wish you could do something for us. We've got champagne tastes but a beer income.’ They had fallen in love with a dress in one of the departments but they couldn't afford it. I said that I might be able to help them.”

Sanders brought the customers over to a more moderately priced department and eventually sold them each two dresses, which cost less than the one dress they had first admired.

But that's not the end of the story. Several hours later, the Nordstroms came out of their meeting, “looking bedraggled,” Sanders continued. “Bruce came over to me and said, ‘Betsy, I know you took care of those customers. I just want to hear what the story was.’ That was just emblazoned on me. I thought, ‘My gosh, the customer really is number one with them.’ It didn't matter what was on his mind. He was not going to forget there is a customer with a need.”

Awareness on the sales floor must be a constant. Although it's important to pick up on what the customer is wearing, veteran Nordstrom salespeople caution that snap judgments based on a customer's appearance can cause you to lose out on a potentially lucrative sale. For example, a woman once walked into the sportswear department of the Nordstrom store in Tacoma. She was in her fifties, dressed in tacky clothes and a pair of old white tennis shoes, one of which had a hole in the toe. She did not look the part of a Nordstrom customer, and no salespeople rushed over to her. After a few minutes went by, Pat McCarthy, a new salesman at the time, came over to say hello. Two hours later, she had purchased about $25,000 worth of sport coats, shirts, and, sweaters, which, she explained, were uniforms for the crew of her boat. She turned out to be the daughter of a famous American industrialist, and she was on her way to her estate in the San Juan Islands, north of Seattle.

The cliché, “Don't judge a book by its cover,” was never more apropos.

“We talk with our team all the time about floor awareness,” said manager Callie Hutton. “We should be aware of what's happening in our store. Make sure you know who's on your floor and how you are going to help them. Have your head up so that you can greet and engage a customer. You should be aware of what's happening outside our store. Is there a parade or a political demonstration? What holiday is coming up? With a regular customer, are you aware of who's in their family, and their network? Our customer service culture is to get to know you as a person. It helps us sell to you. But we're also your friends. My customers are my friends because I've gotten to know their lives so well.”

It's important to be aware of the competition and what they're doing in terms of merchandise, technology, and so on. What are they doing that you're not doing?

“We are never so cocky to think that we are doing it the best way and that we couldn't be better,” said executive Greg Holland. “That awareness and curiosity is important for a company to continue to grow.”

“Heads‐Up” Service

The pace is rarely leisurely at Nordstrom Rack, which is the company's discount store division. The Rack's playbook is to be “sized, filled in, clean, and clutter free with a fast and friendly checkout.” The Rack is stuffed to the gills with merchandise, which customers (who are shopping on their own) keep unfolding and misplacing, which means that Nordstrom employees are in a perpetual state of refolding and relocating. But they still have to be aware in order to help customers who want to pay for their items and get out as quickly as possible using mobile checkout. In order to meet that challenge, Geevy Thomas, former Rack president, said, “we went from ‘heads‐down’ service, which is about sizing; to ‘heads‐up’ service. People on the floor must have their heads on a swivel to see the customers, be aware of what needs they might have, and what opportunities we have to take care of them.”

Managers' Roles

Managers create, maintain, and support the corporate service culture. Therefore, they must have an appreciation and awareness of the company's history, culture, guiding principles, trials and tribulations, failures, and successes.

Senior managers' responsibilities include hiring the right people, then empowering, managing, mentoring, praising, rewarding, and retaining those people. They create the atmosphere and the culture, but it is up to the people on the front lines to do the rest.

Because they have experienced every level of the organization, frontline managers know what to look for in a new hire, and they know how to empower those people, mentor them, recognize them, and praise them for a job well done. Rather than sit behind a desk, managers are expected to spend some of their time on the selling floor (like the proprietors of small boutiques) interacting with the customers and the sales staff. They are paid a salary plus commission on any sales they make and are eligible for a bonus tied to percentage increases in sales over the previous year.

The store manager's primary responsibility is to set the tone for what happens on the sales floor, interacting with the salespeople and the customers.

“Much of what happens in this company is environmental,” said a manager from the East Coast. “You absorb it by watching and seeing the focus and priorities, and it snowballs.”

A Nordstrom store manager in the Pacific Northwest said that part of her job is to promote an attitude among store employees that reflects: “It's not ‘this is my department and that's your department.’ It's ‘this is our store, our customer, our results.’”

A store manager in the Pacific Northwest makes sure that he knows the names and the faces of everybody who works in his store. “Being able to praise people is so important. It's the simple, personal things you say about them. You walk up to a salesperson and you say, ‘I saw you had a 15 percent increase yesterday. Good job!’ That's powerful. You need to point out to others what makes that person a unique member of his or her department.”

Making Memories

“Every time a customer comes into our stores is an opportunity to create a memory,” says a store manager.” We need to staff our store with memory makers.”

Here are a few examples of how aware and mindful Nordstrom salespeople created memories.

After purchasing a prom dress for her 16‐year‐old daughter, a mother went to the shoe department to find matching shoes. She mentioned to a saleswoman that her daughter walks with crutches and wears braces on her feet that go halfway up her shin. She always had to wear “ugly, clunky” shoes to formal affairs. The saleswoman encouraged the mother to return to the store with her daughter and she promised that she would find the perfect shoe for the teenager. A few days later, when mother and daughter returned, the saleswoman brought out a shoe that matched perfectly. The saleswoman “tried it on her like she was Cinderella,” wrote the mother in a letter to Nordstrom management. “It fit!!!!!!”

The daughter, mother, and saleswoman discussed whether to have a shoemaker add a bit of “insurance” (a strap or tie) to make sure the shoe would stay on. The saleswoman suggested that if they added a strap, they could hide it with a bow. As the mother and daughter were leaving, the saleswoman asked them to return with a picture of the girl at the prom, which they did.

When customers perceive associates less as salespeople and more as problem solvers, those associates become more powerful ambassadors for the brand they represent.

A Nordstrom customer from the East Coast wrote this story to the company: “I am deaf, and I wanted slippers for my mother. I left the old slippers in my other car.” The Nordstrom salesperson called the woman's husband for her (she couldn't use the phone), “got the size, and talked him into shopping for dinner and cooking it.”

A husband and wife from New Hampshire were shopping at a Nordstrom store in the Midwest. A salesperson (let's call her Jane) was helping them. The wife tried on a red jacket with matching sweater and looked fabulous. Her husband kept telling her to buy them, but she hesitated even though she loved them. Jane questioned the customer about her hesitation. The customer told her they were in from out of town for a party, and she hadn't brought her jewelry. Jane asked whether the customer liked the necklace and earrings that Jane herself was wearing, and the customer replied ‘yes.’ Jane offered to loan them for the evening. The customer bought the jacket and sweater and when Jane wrapped the purchases she also wrapped her jewelry to go with them. The couple was staying close to where Jane's son works, so she gave them directions to drop off her jewelry with him. The jewelry was returned along with a very gracious thank‐you note.

During a Nordstrom anniversary sale one July, a Nordstrom store provided golf carts to carry customers and their packages to their cars and provide transportation to the store from the other side of the mall.

On a hot and humid afternoon, one Nordstrom golf cart driver named Joyce was heading back to the store to recharge her cart when she noticed a customer in distress. The customer had many packages and had forgotten where she parked. Joyce offered to help the customer find her car. As they drove around the parking garage, the customer remembered the car was one level up. Joyce began making her way up the ramp, but the cart's power went out and it couldn't make it up the incline. The customer tried to help push, but Joyce would not hear of it. She told the customer, “Oh no, we're Nordstrom, please have a seat and I will push the cart.” So in her skirt and heels, Joyce pushed the cart, the customer, and her packages to the top of the ramp. Once on level ground, Joyce was able to get enough power to deliver the customer to her car.

How about this one? Two Canadian shoppers were visiting the downtown Seattle store. As one of them was trying on a pair of boots and looking at them in the mirror, a thief swiped her purse and her other shopping bags. The purse contained all her Canadian money, ID, iPhone, and car keys.

The shoe salesperson contacted security and the store manager, who accompanied the two women to an in‐store Nordstrom restaurant to wait for the police. Magically, a restaurant server materialized with chocolates. For the next four hours, the server brought the two damsels in distress two full meals, drinks, more chocolates, and a bottle of bubbly to take back home to Canada.

After filling out the police report (and learning that the thief's picture was caught on security cameras), the shopper and her friend still needed to get back home. The store manager had a solution. He hired a locksmith to make the shopper a replacement car key so that she and her friend could drive back to Canada. Oh, and the manager gave her $400 in cash and took her to pick out a new purse—compliments of Nordstrom.

Please note: great customer service doesn't have to be those kinds of grand gestures. It can be just as powerful when it's a small, human kindness.

Christine Virtue, a customer who has a Christian ministry with her husband, Brian, posted a Nordstrom experience she had with her young daughter, Morgan, who has special needs.

“Lately I have been dealing with multiple school systems, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and doctors who all specialize in working with children and more often than not I have left more hurt, sad, frustrated, or misunderstood,” she wrote. “Then I go to Nordstrom. And they of all people ‘get it.’”

Morgan, who has cerebral palsy, wears a brace on her lower leg, so her parents must buy her two pairs of the same shoe, two sizes apart. At Nordstrom, the salesperson told the parents that they could buy the shoes that Morgan liked in the two different sizes. The salesperson was empowered by Nordstrom to break up the pairs of shoes so that each fit the proper foot—and charge just the price of one pair. That is standard Nordstrom policy for any fitting discrepancy over a size‐and‐a‐half. As Morgan's mom wrote:

When a customer came to the Nordstrom store in the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California, to purchase a handbag, salesperson Jennifer Youkhanna showed the customer options both online and in the store. The customer chose a bag in black that was on sale and an exclusive of the Anniversary Sale. The bag was available online and was to be directly shipped to the customer's home.

Unfortunately, the customer later received an e‐mail from Nordstrom indicating that her order was cancelled because it could not be fulfilled. She was disappointed. But the following day the customer got a call from Jennifer Youkhanna, who apologized that the order had been cancelled. But she also had good news. She had just received a bag on the sales floor that was exactly the one that the customer had ordered. Sold! If Jennifer had not been aware of the progress of the order and the problem in ordering, she never would have made the sale nor impressed her customer.

Measure Both Feet

Asked about the best advice he gives his shoe salespeople, Bruce Nordstrom replied: “I tell them to measure both feet.”

Measure both feet? In the literal sense, a knowledgeable shoe salesperson will measure both feet because she knows that a customer's right foot might be a slightly different size than the left foot. So, by measuring both feet, she is showing the customer that she's a professional, that she knows what she's doing. Nordstrom people are trained to understand the nature and anatomy of the foot, in order to insure the best fit.

Just as important as the actual measurement is the salesperson's taking the time to talk to the customer and to begin planting the seeds of a relationship by asking pertinent questions:

What kind of business are you in?

Are you on your feet all day?

Do you need dress shoes or more casual shoes?

Do you play sports?

Do you need shoes for those activities?

Do you have foot problems?

All the while, that salesperson is creating a relationship by taking note of what the customer is telling her. The salesperson is using his product knowledge and awareness of trends to make a connection with the customer and to sell more merchandise. And every successful salesperson knows that the customer has all the answers. All you have to do is ask—and be aware of their answers.

Everyone Is in Customer Service

When everyone on your team is aware of the importance of taking care of the customer, then everyone on your team is in the customer service department.

Take the manager in the restaurant in Nordstrom's downtown San Francisco store, who saw a young boy spill blackberry lemonade on his entire sweater. Aware that the weather was cold and that the boy and his mother were about to go walking to see a play after lunch, the manager brought the boy a new sweater to wear and took the soiled sweater (that wasn't from Nordstrom) to alterations to be cleaned.

Or how about this one from a customer from Tucson, Arizona, who was with her 14‐year old son and 47 other kids on a school trip to Los Angeles, which included a formal banquet dinner and a concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra that night. The mom had forgotten to pack her son's dress pants. After finding out there was no way to ship his pants there in time, she called Nordstrom's store in Topanga, California, early in the morning before it opened. Ramon Lopez (assistant manager in Logistics), took the call and said he would find someone in the clothing department to help the mom once the store opened. As the mom wrote:

The Diamond Story

Here's a story that encapsulates all the values we've discussed thus far: trust, respect, communication and collaboration, and awareness.

Lisa McIntire Shaw was shopping at the Nordstrom store at the South Park Mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was near closing time. She tried on some clothes, made some purchases, and went directly home. That night, before going to bed, she discovered that a 2.8‐carat diamond from her wedding ring was missing. She assumed that she lost the diamond at Nordstrom.

The very next morning, Mrs. Shaw went to the store when it opened and headed over to the women's department, where she had last been. She got down on her hands and knees, searching for the diamond.

Eric Wilson, the loss prevention agent for that store, noticed the customer crawling on the floor, and asked how he could help. After she explained the situation to him, Eric got down on his hands and knees and joined the search. No luck. He took Mrs. Shaw's contact information and told her he would follow up.

Eric then contacted two employees in building services, Bart Garcia and Tom Fraley, who joined in the search. Again, no luck. Perhaps the diamond was in one of the vacuum cleaner bags? They gathered the vacuum bags, and began splitting them open and sifting through their dirty contents. Eventually, voilà! They found the 2.8‐carat stone.

When Eric called Mrs. Shaw with the good news, she was thrilled to the point of tears. Soon after, her sister blogged about the experience, and others tweeted their appreciation for the team's service.

Eric Wilson took the initiative. His job description did not include scrutinizing full vacuum cleaner bags. He could have told building services about the lost diamond and then moved on with his tasks for the day. But the customer desperately wanted to find her diamond. Eric owned the situation. He figured out the best approach to solving the problem and made a difference in a person's life.

Nordstrom spread the tale throughout the company and the culture, including producing a video centered on an interview with the customer. The video clip was shown to virtually all 72,000‐plus Nordstrom employees, who were encouraged to “create your own version of the ‘diamond story.’”

To top it off, the video was played at the company's annual shareholders meeting in Seattle. After the clip, Erik Nordstrom told the audience, this story of customer service “raises the bar.” Then he introduced Eric Wilson, Bart Garcia, and Tom Fraley, all of whom were flown in from North Carolina, along with members of their families. They were greeted with a standing ovation.

“How can we create an environment where people like them can do great things?” asked Erik. “Eric Wilson didn't ask what his job description was in loss prevention. Job one for us is to take care of the customer. Most housekeeping people view their job as cleaning the store. That's where it stops and starts. Clearly, our housekeeping folks knew that their job was taking care of customers. Here was an opportunity to take care of a customer in a different way. All of our jobs are much broader. We all have our day‐to‐day job of contributing to take care of customers. But now and then we are presented with opportunities to do it in a different sense, in a broader sense. That story is a great example of what's possible when we focus on the customer.”