When I first went into legal business development consulting, my boss assigned The Nordstrom Way as required reading. I wondered what lessons could I possibly learn from a department store to apply to my role as a client manager and product developer.
This book helped me to understand that to be successful in consulting I’d need to not be focused just on what my organization wanted to accomplish, or what rules and processes we could put in place to better manage and serve our clients and our work. I needed to orient myself toward what I needed to do and what the organization needed to do to take care of our clients.
We’re applying that lesson this year with how we’re approaching market research. Before undertaking a big project, we’re out talking to our state think tank leaders to find out what research will be most useful to them. The thinking is that it will make our research more customer driven and therefore we’ll see more groups using the research. We’ll be listening to our customer along the way to make sure that we’re creating the products that they want and need to help them do their jobs.
How do you think about customer service when it comes to our audiences and what are some resources, practices, and tricks you’ve used to build your customer service skillset?