The Tire Story

A few months ago, I ordered a few books from Amazon on customer service.  I wanted to learn how other industries approach service excellence to see if there were any best practices that we could adopt in our hospital to improve the patient and family experience.  I wasn't sure where to start looking, so I searched for books about companies that I knew had a reputation for their customer service - customers like Disney, Ritz Carlton, and Nordstrom.  I ended up purchasing a book about each company's approach to customer service, and I found a great book called "The Nordstrom Way to Customer Experience Excellence" by Robert Spector and Breanne O. Reeves.  It's a really great book, and I can't wait to apply some of the principles used by Nordstrom to create an excellent patient experience.

I've recently shopped at Nordstrom, and I can honestly say that the overall experience was really great!  They definitely do what they say they do in "The Nordstrom Way."  But I have to be honest - it wasn't my experience at being a Nordstrom shopper that caused me to look for business books about Nordstrom and the customer experience.  I actually had heard all about Nordstrom in some of my business classes.  There is a story that I've heard several times that is used to illustrate how far Nordstrom's employees will go to making sure that the customer's needs are first and foremost.  The story itself is a bit too unbelievable, but it does make the point well.  I wanted to learn more about "The Nordstrom Way" because of the story itself.  Was it true or not?

Nordstrom is known for having an incredibly lenient return policy (see "Nordstrom's Return Policy is Still the Best: Five Things to Know").  If you don't like what you purchased, just bring it to any Nordstrom store and they will refund your money, no questions asked.  You can return the item at any time, and in many cases you won't even need a receipt.  As the story goes, a customer brought a set of tires to a Nordstrom store and the salesperson gladly took them back and gave the customer a full refund.  Nordstrom doesn't even sell tires!  They never have sold tires.  Business experts and corporate consultants use the story to show that Nordstrom is so committed to the customer experience that they will give refunds for anything, even a product that they don't even sell! 

As one their former Co-Presidents (the company is entirely family run), Jim Nordstrom, once said, "Returns are the best way in the world for us to own the customer forever.  When somebody comes in with a return, that's the time to separate yourself from the competition.  You have to remember that the person who's returning the item is back in our store.  We want them to see that we're on their side."

He went on, "If you take back the item with a smile, and no questions asked and the customer walks out the door happy, what's that worth?  A lot.  It's the best sales closure we have as a company."

The story seems a bit farfetched and apocryphal.  But here's the thing - it's actually true!  It happened in 1975 after Nordstrom acquired three stores in Alaska from the Northern Commercial Company, a chain of full-line department stores that sold just about everything, including - you guessed it - tires!  Of course, after Nordstrom took over the stores, they stopped selling tires.  But here is what happened, in the words of John Nordstrom, yet another of the company's many leaders from the family:

I was visiting Fairbanks soon after the change and was standing in the back of the store with our manager.  The doors opened for the day and we saw a small, older man walking across the street carrying a tire.  He entered the store and looked around, seemingly confused.  Our manager started toward the door and I grabbed him and said, "Let's stay here and see how our team handles this."

Our young salesman greeted the customer and asked to help him.  The little guy said he had purchased the tire here and it didn't fit his car, so he wanted to return it.  I was so happy when our young salesman asked if the customer remembered how much he had paid for it.  The guy thought it was about $25.  Our guy opened the cash register and handed him the $25 and told him he hoped he would return so we could help him with clothing or shoes.

We took the tire and nailed it up in the stockroom as an example of how you give customer service.  We didn't realize the story would become a wonderful cultural pillar of the company.

Now that's customer service!  The story has become legend, but it is a perfect illustration of how far Nordstrom employees are willing to go in order to serve their customers.  What is your organization's version of the tire story?  What are you willing to do for your customers?