So, I came across the name Jamie Nordstrom a while back. It wasn’t in a big headline or anything, just mentioned somewhere, maybe in an article I skimmed about business stuff, particularly customer service, which Nordstrom is known for, right?
It got me thinking. Mostly about how these big companies actually make their philosophies work on the ground. It’s easy to read about values, but doing it is another story. So, I decided to try a little experiment, just for myself, inspired by this idea I associated with the name – maybe it was about really listening to the customer, beyond just the surveys.
My Little Experiment
I started simple. I deal with emails and sometimes support tickets in my side hustle. Usually, I just answer the question and close it. This time, I tried something different. For a week, with every interaction, I pushed myself to ask one extra question, something open-ended, after solving the main issue. Like, “Just curious, what are you hoping to achieve with this project?” or “Is there anything else, even small, that’s been bugging you about how this works?”
First hurdle: It felt awkward. Really awkward. Like I was prying or wasting their time. A couple of people just gave one-word answers or didn’t reply to the extra question at all. That felt like a failure initially. I thought, okay, maybe this super personal approach doesn’t scale or just isn’t for everyone.
Pushing Through
But I stuck with it for the week I promised myself. Here’s what happened:
- A few people actually opened up. One person mentioned a completely different issue I hadn’t even known existed. It wasn’t a formal complaint, just a frustration.
- Another person shared their goal, which gave me an idea for a small feature improvement later on.
- It took more time. Definitely slowed down my response rate for that week.
The Interesting Part: The interactions where people did respond felt more… real? Less transactional. It wasn’t just about fixing a problem anymore. It felt more like a conversation. Even the people who didn’t answer the extra question still got their problem solved just as quickly.
What I Reckon Now
So, did I discover some secret sauce linked to Jamie Nordstrom? Probably not. I don’t even know if that person is heavily involved in customer strategy specifically. But the practice itself was the point. Trying to actively listen and be curious, even when it felt inefficient or awkward.
It showed me that getting that ‘Nordstrom level’ of insight isn’t about some magic formula. It’s probably just consistently doing the slightly harder, slightly more time-consuming thing of genuinely trying to understand the person on the other end. It’s messy, doesn’t always work, and probably requires management that actually supports that extra time spent, instead of just looking at ticket closure rates. It’s less about a name and more about an intentional, sometimes clunky, effort.
