A DELIGHTFUL Customer Experience

I was just thinking about the best customer experience I ever had – an experience that was really a plethora of experiences and left everlasting impressions.

It was, in fact, a delightful customer experience – and that is the shopping experience I continuously had at Nordstrom’s, South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California.

When you arrive at Nordstrom’s, there is always a sales person there to help but never to harass. I hate shopping, particularly for clothes, so I can tell the sales associate exactly what I am looking for and she either finds it in her department or tells me where I can find it. If she has it, she always reserves a changing room for me while I continue to look. She also provides me with several other samples and by the time I show up at the changing room, there is usually an entire wardrobe awaiting my approval.

Sometimes, I’d get so “into” shopping, I’d get thirsty but there was the sales associate, ready and willing to get me a glass of water or a latte. If I was unhappy because I felt too tall, too short, too fat or too skinny, the sales associate would always find something positive to say. No matter how many times I couldn’t fit into or didn’t like what she selected, she happily ran back to find another size, color, or style. By the time I left, we were always on a first name basis and I felt ready to invite her and her husband to dinner at my house, thinking what a great friend she would make….

Okay…sometimes I spend lots of $$ but there have been other times when I couldn’t find anything I wanted and left without burning the dollars in my hand. There were never any hard feelings.

What about returns? This particular Nordstrom’s took back returned merchandise whether you wore it or not….if you weren’t happy, they took it back with a smile and no questions. In fact in one case, my husband returned a wallet I bought him as a gift due to “poor wear and tear” only to discover that I didn’t buy him that wallet there. Regardless, Nordstrom took the wallet back anyway and let my husband select another wallet and no charge??!!

To my dying day, I will always remember the customer experience of Nordstrom’s. So much so that when I recover the $$ I lost in this economy, you can bet I’ll be shopping back at Nordstrom’s again!!

In the meantime, I’ve learned that the people that work at Wal-Mart’s are friendly too….