international organizations, both profit and non-profit, author, lecturer, workshop facilitator,
motivational and keynote speaker on Wednesday, April 2, 2003!
Ordinary Acts,
Extraordinary Outcomes
If you were asked, "What retailer is most well-known for customer service?"
Which store comes to mind?
If you're like most, your answer is 'Nordstrom.'
The person responsible for that is Betsy Sanders.
Betsy Sande
rs was the Vice-President and General Manager of Nordstrom, Inc. from 1978-1990. She had full responsibility for the company's largest and most profitable division: Southern California. Ms. Sanders was responsible for all strategic planning, budget, operational and bottom-line activities, as well
as management selection, merchandising, and physical plant operations.
She built business to $1 billion in annual revenues; located, planned and opened 19 stores and increased the employee base from 350 to 11,000. Ms. Sanders supported regional credit offices in developing Nordstrom's account base to two million customers. She mentored cutting edge programs in benefits, hiring, motivating and training and planned and executed advertising, sales promotions and public relations. She also represented Nordstrom's customer service ethic as the internal and external spokesperson.
Presently, Ms. Sanders is serves as an advisor to executive management, specializing in the development and implementation of people-centered leadership practices. Areas of expertise include building integrated organizational dynamics, mission-based business and marketing strategies, assessing and strengthening corporate culture, and developing quality performance practices. She serves as a trusted mentor to individuals seeking productive, balanced lives of stewardship.
Ms. Sanders serves as a director on the boards of the following national companies: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Washington Mutual Savings Bank, Wellpoint Health Networks, Inc., Advantica Companies, Inc., Wolverine Worldwide, Inc., Dacor and others.
David Glass, President & CEO, Wal-Mart:
"Should be required reading for all who deliver service to the public."
Amazon.com:
"Betsy Sanders, a former vice-president and general manager with the extraordinarily consumer-oriented Nordstrom department-store chain, believes that true success on the sales floor stems from dedicated leadership in the management ranks and a steadfast commitment to related ideals from those at the top on down. In Fabled Service: Ordinary Acts, Extraordinary Outcomes, Sanders outlines the fundamentals for others who would like to achieve the legendary customer-friendly status that is widely accorded her former employer. The outcome, she stresses, is service that is so effective that it actually influences the decisions of shoppers."
Gene Crumley, Davis, California:
"I have read at least a dozen books on customer service. None even come close to Elizabeth Sanders' book on Fabled Service. Sanders makes her points clearly, illustrating each with a vivid picture or metaphor of how to get it right! I have used Fabled Service as a great departure point for conversations among my colleagues about customer service leadership. If you are only going to read one book on customer service, this is the one to read."
Service Leadership - A belief about one's personal meaning and purspose in life
Encouraged to come up with “an elevator speech” – a verbal calling card explaining what I do – I describe myself as being a resource to people who are committed to leading worthwhile businesses and worthwhile lives- worthwhile not in my judgment, but in your own. All of my work is about helping you to discover your gifts and then to commit to sharing those gifts; about finding your voice, and then connecting your voice to your touch. It is about dreaming and then acting to make those dreams real.
For the first two decade of my professional life I was privileged to be a student at one of the great universities of customer service of our times – Nordstrom. My work is usually categorized as being around service. However, service is the outcome; commitment to developing and contributing personal excellence is the dynamic. So not service per se, but service leadership is my focus: Service leadership being unrelated to a position on an organization chart, rather being a belief about one’s personal meaning and purpose in life.
A BBC-made video captures a telling moment in the life of Mother Teresa. A reporter asks, “Mother Teresa, many say you are a living saint. Are you a saint?” She hesitates just a moment and then answers, “Yes, I am.” Her inquisitor can barely contain his smirk: he has caught this holy woman out in a moment of oh too human pride. Then she goes on, and his expression changes radically; "I am called to be a saint. Just as you are called to be a saint in your work.We are all called to be saints.”
Her point: whatever it is we do, that we give it our best is our calling. Who is calling us? The world, which so needs our contribution. So let the saints come marching in! Into our homes and into our communities. Into our workplaces and into our government offices. Into our heads and hearts and hands and voices.
And I hope the point Mother Teresa is making to all of us stimulates in you your own committment to sainthood!
Betsy Sanders
Certainly no subject has received more attention or consumed more print in the past ten years or so. Yet, reflect on the quality of service you tolerate as a customer, client,patient, buyer, user, lessee, passenger... wherever you find yourself as a patron. Reflect on what it is like to be a customer in your own organization. Reflect on the frustration you feel as you find yourself unable to drive to realization your vision of delighting your customers because you cannot seem to infect others with that vision.
However, it can be so much better. It was my great good fortune to participate for a large part of my life in leading within an organization that is rightly fabled for its service. I came by that opportunity fortuitously, as I was unable to land a teaching job in Seattle in 1971. Economic conditions were so dire that a billboard adjacent to a major freeway exiting the city plaintively requested:Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?
Desperate for work, I ignored all of my education and goals to date to gratefully accept a temporary job at Nordstrom, clerking for $2.46 an hour. That stop-gap job turned into an almost two-decade career that allowed me to work with ever-larger groups of people taking care of growing numbers of customers. In 1990, when I retired as the leader of the Southern California division, Nordstrom and I had reached a milestone together: Some eleven thousand Nordies were delighting customers in that region at the level of one billion dollars in annual sales.
That story is an exciting one, but this book is not about Nordstrom or about retailing in general. It is about why this company and others like it have so passionately focused all of their resources on their customers. It is about how they have engaged ordinary people, people like me, in making their dreams for their business a reality. It is about what degree of dedication to their satisfaction is required to make your company fabled for service.
In short, this book is about leadership. In my time with Nordstrom and in the multitude of experiences I have since enjoyed with companies from the largest conglomerate to the smallest start-up, I am convinced of one thing: Fabled service is always the product of impassioned leadership. The leadership of fabled service summons forth all our talents and energies, as well as our focused intent to excel. At the same time, it brings about a transformation, both in us personally and in the people we lead. It is at once profoundly demanding and profoundly rewarding.
Examining the real-life practice of service leadership does not provide a template for you to apply to your actions or to overlay on your organization. The specifics of what you do to maximize your opportunities for authentic service eminence are unique to you, to the rich resources at your disposal, and to the challenges you face. There is no template, but there are some very definite footsteps you can follow to widen your own path to the customer. In taking a detailed look at the fundamentals of service leadership, I hope to convey to you a sense of your tremendous potential to make a material difference, a difference so distinct that your leadership will extend far beyond your own company or organization.
I wrote this book to share with you an ideal, as well as some very practical considerations in reaching that ideal. In turn, I look forward to learning from you through your customers and enthusiastic retelling of the fables your service leadership engenders.
Betsy Sanders