Growing a Business

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by

Brad Heidemann
in

growingabiz
As a young manager at Nordstrom, I was speaking with John Nordstrom one day and he was complimenting me on the great service my department was giving. I was pleased to be receiving the compliment, however, I was curious about how he could know that when he’d only spent a limited time on the sales floor with me. So I asked him “how do you know we are giving good service?” He said “happy and well-served customers spend more money. When I looked at your numbers, the increases in your sales are a result of good service.” At that time, my department was one of the fastest growing in the company. He was right in that we had a great team, giving great service and it showed in our numbers.

One of the core values of the company is that if we care about our employees and care about our customers, we’ll have a company worth caring about.

When I think about caring for clients, I think about how they are trusting us with their goals, their work, and ultimately their credibility. This is a precious gift and we need to treat that with the honor and respect it deserves. Understanding and exceeding a client’s expectations is the hallmark of good consulting. When we disappoint a client, it’s rarely a blatant violation of their trust, more often it is what I call benign neglect. An apathy or an unwillingness to understand the client at the right level of detail or the unwillingness to do the little extra. At Nordstrom, if I saw someone walk past a messy table and pretend not to notice, I knew that person needed coaching about the importance of doing all the little extras that made up a great experience for our customers.


So what are the little extras in our business? First, it starts with building a relationship with your client. Most of my clients, I consider friends. Some better than others, but I build relationships based on trust and exceeding expectations. My goal is always to become a trusted advisor to my clients. Whenever I am asked about the secret to building trust, I tell people that trust is a function of consistency over time. When clients can depend on you to consistently meet their needs, they will trust you … If you consistently exceed their expectations, you’ll become a “trusted advisor.” Back to the little extras, prompt return of phone calls or emails. Handwritten thank-you notes. Being on time and prepared for meetings. Ensuring that your work is client-ready or pitch perfect. Ensuring that your team is informed so they can be effective in working with your client. There are many ways in which each of us can do the little extras and build trusted relationships.

We also employ something we call the employee thermometer with customer centricity and customer satisfaction surveys to understand how we are doing as a company and what needs to be fixed in order to make us a great service organization. These tools are critical to ensure that we have the insights we need to make the right investments in the business.

Based on employee and customer feedback, we created a role in the company called the Delivery Lead. The Delivery Lead is the single point of accountability within Tahzoo to ensure the quality of our work. In short, the person responsible for making sure we are exceeding client expectations. A DL operates at an account level, overseeing, working on, and guiding multiple workstreams. It is and will continue to be one of the more important roles within our company as we build our digital transformation business.

But back to the John Nordstrom story, survey results notwithstanding … how will I know if we’re building trusted relationships and do the little extras to make a client feel appreciated? I’ll see it reflected in the numbers.