Excerpts:
- p 56 – Callison Architecture is “the firm that has designed every Nordstrom store.”
- p 57 – “In virtually every major expansion and redesign project, St. Charles (Medical Center in Bend, OR) takes into consideration how the medical center can be more efficient and customer friendly.
- p 57 – Starwood Hotels’ “Heavenly Bed” with a 12.5 inch pillow-top mattress that is custom-made by Simmons was in such demand that they began selling entire bed sets (mattress, sheets, pillows, etc.) for $3,000 each, and sold 2,000 of them in a year.
- p 58 – Mike’s Express Carwash in IN and OH is an example of a firm spending money and going out of its way to be different and provide an exceptional customer experience, from facility details to friendliness to entertainment for kids.
- p 108 – Mike’s Express Carwash interviews with open-ended questions beginning with “Will you share with me whatever you’re comfortable sharing, so that I can get to know you better as a person?”
- p 109 – “Be committed to hiring the best – don’t just hire someone because we need the position filled”
- p 115 – If you boil the Nordstrom system down to its essence: “Nordstrom gives its people on the floor the freedom to make entrepreneurial decisions, and management backs them on those decisions.”
- p 144 – The more rules an organization has, the farther and farther it moves away from its customers. “The minute you come up with a rule, you give an employee a reason to say no to a customer … If you give them a hundred rules, you’ve taken away any empowerment that they can have.” Rules make life easier for the organization – not the customer.
- p 183 – on reading and responding to “small” customers write or comment about: “Those things may be small, but when it happens to you, they become significant.”
- p 206 – Callison Architecture’s 10 Relationship-Building Principles:
- Give the clients more than they expect
- Leave them something to remember you by
- Think the project (problem) through
- Ask yourself: “If I were the client, would I pay for this?”
- Don’t give reasons why it can’t be done. Tell how it can be done and the consequences
- Don’t wait to do it if it can be done now
- Service the client, not the project
- You don’t know if you don’t ask
- Start a conversation with one new person every day
- Sketch ideas being discussed in front of the client. Always bring tracing paper and scale