The Nordstrom Way to Customer Experience Excellence, 3rd Edition

Acknowledgments

My Nordstrom journey began in 1982, when I became the regular freelance correspondent in Seattle for Women's Wear Daily and the other trade newspapers that then comprised Fairchild Publications.

One of the first companies I wrote about was Nordstrom, which was then a strictly West Coast retail chain, but was beginning to gain a national reputation for its culture of customer service. As a native of New Jersey, whose first job out of college was writing retail advertising for Bamberger's department store (a division of Macy's), I was fascinated by the Nordstrom culture of taking care of the customer. I remain fascinated to this day.

In 1990, I was contacted by Elizabeth Wales, a Seattle literary agent, whose next‐door neighbor was Patrick McCarthy, then Nordstrom's number one salesperson. Elizabeth asked me if I'd be interested in writing the book with Patrick. You know what my answer was. Five years later, John Wiley & Sons published The Nordstrom Way: The Inside Story of America's Number One Customer Service Company. It quickly became a bestseller, and it changed the course of my life.

As a keynote speaker, I've had an opportunity to speak to every kind of business you can imagine (and some you can't imagine) throughout the United States as well as in 26 countries. It's been quite a ride!

And as an author, I've had the unique opportunity to periodically revisit Nordstrom, both literally and figuratively (as we explain in greater detail in the Introduction). ...