Why I love Nordstrom

Sometimes simple and thoughtful efforts on the part of a business can go a long way towards winning the hearts of customers. In this difficult economic time I have been watching how various businesses have approached this issue. Somehow Nordstrom, clearly an up market retailer, is finding a way to position itself appropriately with customers in the midst of the Great Recession. The below letter appears inside the cover of the latest Nordstrom catalog to arrive in my mail.

We at Nordstrom recognize that these are challenging times for us all. Now more than ever, we feel it’s important for us as a company to focus on what we can do to make a difference to you, our customer.

We know the things you appreciate every day, like great quality and outstanding value, are even more important to you right now. So we wanted you to know that our buyers are working hard to find the best items and best values from the brands you love. In fact, it’s our long-standing tradition to offer you the best possible prices, every day of the year. We do it by pricing all of out items fairly to begin with – without relying on one-day sales, discounts, coupons or other gimmicks. And, we constantly shop other stores so that we can guarantee you the best price on our merchandise.

The bottom line is: you’ll never pay more at Nordstrom. And if, by chance, you ever find one of our items priced lower somewhere else, or you receive a coupon that discounts any item we offer, just let us know. We’ll gladly beat that price.

We think of these extraordinary times as yet another chance to earn your business. And, we sincerely hope that your pleasure in shopping at Nordstrom always equals ours in serving you.

Sincerely,

Blake Nordstrom, Pete Nordstrom, Erik Nordstrom

Even in these trying times we will all allow ourselves a little luxury now and then. I know where I will go when I do. And, I know where I will shop when the good times roll again.

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Try again please

I just completed a phone survey for Bank of America (I am a customer, maybe even a “loyal” one). The primary focus of the survey was about my home equity line. Most of the questions focused on how satisfied I was with the experience of using my line of credit (pretty satisfied) and any problems that I might have had in the recent past (not any).

Clearly BofA is eager to find out how their customers perceive them right now. Since most consumers think of banks as the storefront of the Anti-Christ it is not surprising that they are out doing fine market research. I was honest in my answers.

After she went through the script about my home equity line she threw in a few additional questions. These were really interesting.

• Rate how I perceive the current housing market
• Rate how I perceive mortgage brokers
• Have there been any foreclosures in my neighborhood that I know about in the last 3 months

My answers went from very positive for all the BofA questions to very negative for the perception questions (don’t know of any foreclosures in our area).

I can see the slide deck when this is all done:

BofA customer are very happy with their home equity products, but they are not so happy with the economy. Clearly we need more Federal money so we can afford to make more home equity loans.