We have a rule within our leadership at the APS store that we should know new decks, meaning I like that I want us to build a library here are the things that we're talking about and we're talking about these things all the time Right, these are the things that are important maybe you need to add two slides and if we're building a new deck that I really want to know I like something has happened right either something has happened there has to be permission to build a new deck But we're innovating from the core. We know what we're on strategy. We're on plan. We know what we're talking about That should be the core content. I hate when I see a new deck like who's been telling this no new decks. I'm writing it down Hey everybody welcome to another episode of the Nordy pod. I'm Pete Nordstrom co CEO of Nordstrom and your host for this podcast Join me as I take you on an honest authentic journey through our company and introduce you to many of the fascinating people in my life one episode at a time Today it is my pleasure to be hosting on the Nordy pod Sarah Casalon who is the president of UPS stores now you may be asking yourself well how did this come to be why are these two people talking to each other this you know is not the typical I'm talking to a retail partner of ours or you know specifically about our business and I'll tell you the reason is And you've heard us I think mentioned this before but there was a Forbes survey that comes out every year and it came out a few months ago And we always look at these things you know curious to to see where we might be on it or you know what's going on and the number one Ranked customer satisfaction. I guess that how it that way would say it anyway is the UPS store Number one and for the third year in a row and to put this in context for everyone Those that think Nordstrom really knows what they're doing. We are Where I have to go to page four here. We are number 85 so I feel like there's a lot I can learn here from Sarah today So I'm sorry for the long introduction, but Sarah. Thanks so much for doing this. Thank you so much for having me and we're really proud of that ranking And we really like to take this opportunity to recognize the efforts of each of every one of our franchisees I mean at the end of the day they make the magic happen at the door over the counter and That they are the critical component of how we deliver that type of service every day Okay, I want to start there because I didn't know exactly your business model and so they're franchisees and for people know what that is That means they're running it Not you guys when you're creating the boulevards and curbs the guidelines around how that business is run But they're running it as amazing my how many different franchisees do you have? So we have 5500 locations plus and growing and so within that we have over 3900 individual franchisees That's huge which makes us a pretty unique franchise System and that we have a fairly low owner to center ratio and We think that that's part of our secret sauce because truly these are locally old and individually operated Locations our franchisees live work and play in the communities that they're serving every day So they're invested in the customer they're invested in the outcome They're invested in the communities that they serve and we make sure that So much of our job and so much of our success is to make sure that they are committed to The journey that we're on the expectations that we have the as you said that the boulevards are all headed in the right direction And so that's where we spend a fair amount of our effort. Yeah, you know, I would jump to my mind and we're not a command and control type company But that many moving pieces that many different people involved With the subject of service makes that complicated you don't have complete control Over how this is all gonna go. I mean, I'm curious how you set that up so that you are in a position where you Contrast and that you know, you feel like this is all doing what you want it to do on behalf of the UPS store brand Yes, you can't if you don't mind I might take you on a little bit of a journey And there's a storytelling with kind of the backstory there because I think it's it's important context So I will have been at the UPS start I'm coming up on five years now and I came from specialty retail So Creighton barrel J crew the Ralph Lauren organization So we should stop right now you and I were talking earlier we admit each other when you were at J crew So yes, we did yeah, it's small community. Yeah, so when UPS calls I was curious I it wasn't a very obvious fit you know part of the question I asked is what would UPS not with with me design forward Products and a specialty environment and so I did you know, but any kind of curious retailer Do I started asking questions family friends colleagues and? The response that I got consistently sounded something like this I love my UPS store The team at my UPS store is Fantastic Joe the owner of my UPS store I kept hearing that over and over again and This is a neat trick what's going on here. There's something there's something here because I mean we sell Shipping packing printing mailbox services, right? So they think of us as a needs-based business Nobody wakes up in the morning and says I'm going to the UPS store for my retail therapy, right? So to have established this Emotional connection with the customer That was the first Lightning bolt that went off for me and said there's something here. This is a springboard to a strategy to Acceleration to the modernization of this brand. Let me learn more and find out and so The gap Was it wasn't codified it wasn't declared It was assumed and it was in practice and it was natural and so that made it easy and we said okay. Here's what we have to do What does service actually look like right? What does it mean or does it feel like what are the behaviors? What are the tools that we needed to be able to make sure that we're measuring the behaviors and we are Empowering our franchisees to respond to them and that we are Coaching and providing clarity around what those expectations look like so we took The raw stuff that was already there and put the right Structure coaching and conversations around it. We would like to believe it. It's a never-ending process and and the outcomes have been really Really positive we didn't have five years ago any formal customer listening tools voice of the customer right so we've put those in place We make those real-time insights and recommended actions available to the franchisees and their associates so that's how we have really taken this To the next level and what it has the results and I think we share this in common with Nordstrom is say well, how do you? What's the ROI on service? It's all through revenue and growth full stock, right? Because if it's not there you'll see it too Yeah In the opposite way so the co-ed environment was certainly a tail-in for us We saw 20% growth in 2020 over 2019 and we've lost none of that volume. We've actually had a 7% cater since then and so it really was Showing up for the customers when they needed us and continuing to build on that level of experience and expectations and we have to earn That ranking back every single year every single day in every single store with every single customer Yeah, it's super impressive. I mean like this is all leads to so many questions So I'm not sure if I'm gonna do this in perfect order, but I'm curious when you showed up there Did the UPS store business have a big culture and reputation around customer service? Yes, and no kinds of pens on the audience, right? So let me pay because back to how I started the story The customer would say my UPS store So there was that connection there right clearly that happened if you were to ask the UPS leadership They felt disconnected to the stores and to the to the strategy and and felt like they didn't really understand the culture and they wanted to support the culture and the outcomes and the customer experience And there was just a lot of layers I think between the UPS fortune 35 company and then you've got the the UPS Inc. UPS store in franchise and then we have the field team and then when they have the franchise So it was hard for them to get there and I would say the consistency of the service experience was very different So someone might say I love my UPS store and that I was to describe your experience And it would look very different than it would In a different store and so making sure that we Normalize that a bit and that's about bringing the whole fleet with right so it can't just be a handful of or 30% of the
the stores that are pulling, we need everybody to come with to make sure that that experiences consistent. And I get really excited when I talk about these things. So here's maybe it's not a trick question, but I thought it was interesting. So we're business services provider. We don't even have traffic killers because they're going to need space business, right? So if you're coming, we have an implied conversion rate of 98%. If you're walking into the UPS store, you've somewhat already decided that you're going to have a transaction with us in some way. But when we do put, we'll be put the voice of the customer and listening tools in place, what's the number one thing that drove customer satisfaction in our needs based business? You want me to guess? Yeah. I don't know. I would guess it had to do with speed and convenience, wouldn't it? It's still the Greek. It's the Greek. The Greek. Oh, you know, we had a, we've talked about that. Like, one of our biggest things is just saying hello. I mean, you know, just greeting customers. It seems so simple, but you know, you're right. I mean, that's, that's the truth for us. Yeah. It's still listening. I felt heard. I felt like they were trying to understand my needs. So it was also a learning for me as I stepped in to think that the behaviors, maybe that we were looking for trying to make more consistent than the stores. Maybe the belief is that that's the domain of specialty retail. And it isn't. It is just, it's just, we get to serve a profoundly human population, right? In any way. And so it is still the Greek. It's still listening and identifying needs even in a context that looks a little bit different from, from yours or where I came from. Yeah. You know, but before I get off this survey thing, I kind of want to go through this real quick because it's been mentioned before we had, you know, discount tire on here. And that's another reason I had talked to them as they showed up on the list and I had had a personal experience with them. So I wanted to learn more. So but if you look at this list, when you guys have been number one for three years and they said that it's been pretty consistent. The top five, you got like check fillet up there and REI, which is kind of an Arlene to what we do. Your discount tire was number eight. And then, you know, set that you compete with at certain level, like FedEx is 14. Brands like American Express at 19, Ritz Carlton, which you'd expect on a high touch thing like this, maybe 27. Amazon 31, which speaks to how customers value speed and convenience for sure. So four of 48 in an out burger. Who doesn't like it in an out burger? It's that's 53 Costco 59 four seasons hotel 83, Nordsom 85. So that gives people this a little bit of context. But again, I want to go back. We used to be on these lists that we are on the top 10 of this all time and like the 90s of stuff. And then what happened was there's this tipping point where all of a sudden brands like Netflix and Amazon are up at the top list and we were on it. We get pushed down and that's because those lists are defined by what customers view as a good surface, not us. And they value speed and convenience. It's just kind of why I mentioned it to you. Customers define good service with our busy lives is can I get in and out of that place in a way that's not a hassle. We're very selective about our real estate placement because yes, it's the core service. It's the magic that happens over the counter. But it is also we need to have parking. Great. We need to have a quick in and out. We need to be we're moving heavy items or heavy packages and we need a double door, right? Double wide door. We need a curb cut. So there are a lot of I mean, I think this is part of what I love about retail and a kind of joke. I said, you know, don't tell my boss retail is easy because we're all customers. So we all know what feels good. We might not know what all the sciences, right? Because retail is the detail you don't see. So it just might not know what all of the sciences like this felt convenient because all of those things were in place. So we're very disciplined on the speed and the convenience piece and one of the things that we had to do we recognize very early on is we have five times and it's actually more than that. That's about six times for a person. Six times more packages in our store than we did prior to the pandemic. Our stores aren't getting any bigger. Can't make them bigger. So we've had to come in with a very aggressive remodel new concept that has what we would call a bias towards package holes and a bias towards efficiency so that we can cost effectively handle all of those packages in the way that we need to. So we are we just we put that project on the rails and 2022. We now have over 25% of the fleet remodeled and we'll close that out within a seven year period for all 5500 locations. So it's a very ambitious plan but recognizing that in order to meet the needs of the customer our physical environment needs to meet their needs as well and to meet the needs of the franchisees. We need to be able to operate really effectively in our stores and beat if I can because I do want to celebrate Nordstrom for a second in our partnership with UPS. We had an opportunity to visit the old orchard store. Okay. So many things that I could talk about for the maybe the top three of all the things I appreciated was when we went into the footwear stock room and it was impeccable impeccable. The sizes and the styles were front facing. Everything was organized and I love a good back room right. A good back of house because to your point like speed and convenience. I just don't think it's possible to service the customer on the floor with how are you bringing relevant products out? How are we getting to the sizes? How are we doing this quickly and conveniently if that beautiful system that you had in the back of the house wasn't there. So congratulations to Elena and her team and and however you all are doing it because I was beyond impressed that I was going to tell the male team this is what every UPS movement should be thinking to aspire to that warms my heart because I was a shoe guy. That's how I got started this business. I spent a lot of time in shoe stock rooms. I was a stock person for a few years when I was young. So that's nice to hear. We don't always nail that but I'm glad that's what you saw there at Old Orchard. I'll make sure we give those guys some kudos for that. I saw a lot of beautiful things but that one I think spoke to the operator in me. That's great. You know, another thing that connected us here is you were at a conference with Jason Elliott from our logistics team and I think you may be sure to stage with him. I'm not sure how it went but what happens he sent a note to several of us here in the executive team saying, you know, I want to share recap of the meeting I have with the president of UPS store with Sarah regarding why UPS store was ranked number one by Forbes three years in a row. So he had this whole thing that he sent around and I want to I want to go through some of the points he made and then get your reaction to it and use that as a jumping off point for you to talk about what it is that you guys do. And the first one that he mentioned is service is emotional, not transactional. And I will tell you if I didn't know anything more about what I've read or I've talked to you, I would view the UPS store as like a 100% transactional thing. And you guys know that transactions matter, but you're trying to do an and on top of that. So can you talk about why to you guys service is emotional, not just transactional and why that's an important part of the rest of me for you? I would say that this probably is the biggest and most obvious shift that we've made over the last five years, right, is to start articulating to our franchisees, to our service leaders, what this means and how it shows up in our marketing and how it shows up in the conversations. So if we think about what we really do in every package, there is a story. There's a shipper and a recipient and that package is meant to connect those two. It might be the baby blanket from grandma for the grandchild she hasn't met yet. Or I've taken customer calls, panic moms, sending my kid off to school and we left their meds at home and the insulin needs to get there and we need to track it, right? And so you might be a small business owner and this is your first transaction where you're shipping to your customer and you are coming to the UPS store because of that reliability and that trust and expertise really matters for you. If you're using our print services to print a menu, that might be your dreams on paper. By the virtue of coming in for a notary, you're making a decision in your life that carries a very wavy thing, little known fact about the UPS store. We have dozens of people who get married in a UPS store every year because I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, because and what a privilege it is because of the the notary service. If you are renting a mailbox again, that might be your entryway into your small business and getting your name out there and you need a straight address. So we just went through one of the events that I love. I think it's fun. We call it the big shred event post tax season, right? Shredding. How sexy is shredding. But you're trusting us with your privacy, with your information.
and you need to know that we're gonna handle it in a discreet and safe and secure way. Even, even faxing, we have enormous fax business. - Do people still fax stuff? - You can't hack a fax. - Okay, there you go. - So there are still several industries, the medical industry, a fax will count as sort of a legal electronic signature in some ways. So when you have that need, you don't think about it until you need it and we're here for you. So reframing, even we talk about our returns business, and it's a lot of transactions. I love this story, it's my favorite stories. I was working at peak shift this past peak, middle of December at a store. And a customer comes in with a wagon full of returns. Not one returns have been initiated yet. There's not one bar code started and it's peak and we're all stressed out, I'm stressed out watching it and the lovely franchise owner, she takes our wine busting tool and she steps to the side and she gets her through it. And at the end of the transaction, which took a half an hour, you could see the customer visibly relieved and grateful and she started telling us the story of her mother had fallen critically ill. And so her and her fiance decided to pull up their wedding and they had gotten married that weekend. And these were the remnants of the things that didn't work for the wedding. And she showed us her video and how every woman in her family lined up with a cality and built her bouquet and she walked up. By the end of the story, we are all weepy, the other customers in line are weepy. And so you can think about it as a high volume, high speed transaction, but there's always a story. There's always a connection that's available and what a privilege it is for us to be able to do that. And while we're doing that, we're helping our franchisees to live their entrepreneurial dreams at the same time and maybe build a generational wealth. And so it's a fun business and there's a lot of life being lived in our stores and we want to honor that humanity and every transaction. - How well it. Okay, the next thing that came up they highlighted and talked about was customer lifetime value is greater than single visit optimization. - Yes. So we're not agree at it systematically, but I don't know that we have to be. I think we just have to have the right mindset about it. And what I mean by that is you can come into a store today and be Sarah with your drop and go return. And maybe there's no upsell there, right? And but tomorrow your Sarah, who's there to just make copies. And then the next time you come in, you're Sarah who's shipping the package. And maybe I'm a really infrequent shipper, but what's really important is that every single one of those touch points is an opportunity to build that value and that reputation and to talk about your products and services to educate your customer on and to again, that listening to ask the questions about what your needs are. And we have so many stories of someone came in for a quick return and might have seen a graduation season here. So we've got all of the fat heads and all the kind of yard signs celebrating the graduates. And so I'm gonna seize them on the print. Well, so you do that. Yeah, we do that. That might be interesting, right? So kind of creating the connections with the brand and the customer beyond that one trip is really important because of the diversity of products and services that we have to offer. - Okay, here's the next one. Service must be cultural DNA, not a program. And so that's part of what we talked about. And it happens here too. It can't just be, well, this year's initiative is this and then you move on to something else. It's gotta be part of the culture. Talk about how you think about that and how you've made it something that wasn't a one and done thing, but it always on priority. - Not unlike many of the organizations that I've been in, compliance with a capital C was the big word when I joined. So we had our center visit checklist and our compliance systems and I got a group of our senior store leaders together and I asked that same question of what makes a great store? How would you describe a great store? And I got some interesting answers, you know, uniform compliance, everybody's got a name badge on and clean, tidy, and I'm like, oh, that's just a store, right? So, but the answer is, I think for me, it's how do we make the customer feel? How do we make the customer feel consistently and shift from a compliance mindset to a commitment mindset? You can have really, really, really high expectations. Everybody wants to play in a winning team. You can have really, really, really high expectations and not make them feel heavy and to demonstrate that those expectations will result in your success. And if you are committed to that vision and the notions and the practices, then ultimately that success is going to come. So we've in our communication, in our training, gosh, we've invested so much in training, it's a whole restrictive, but investing a line training, taking friction out of the franchisee experience so we can focus on that commitment. And everybody needs to be in stores, right? You can't measure it or feel it or see it from your desk. Yeah. You have to be everybody having that shopkeeper mentality. This is inspiring to me. I'm, I feel like I'm kind of taking mental notes and I know I'm going to listen back this episode and take some little notes because there's so much application what you're talking about for us. Okay, so the next thing that was written down in terms of sharing what it was like to hear you talk about your business was simplicity and relevance win. Yes. Okay, so we started, maybe our offline conversation, talking a bit about my retail background and the leadership that I was trained under and relentless curation. We talk about the value for the customer, right? And that is by providing them with the products and services that they value. So that's, it's hard that discipline. We would have pickup items that were on the counter that had no relevancy to our brand and that was just taken up cash and work and somebody had to touch it, right? So let's just take all of that out and make sure that everything that we're offering. Give me an example of something that would have been, that just wasn't value adding or relevant. When my team is listening to this podcast, they're going to know the answer before I, (laughs) or they even hear, we were selling a light switch at the cash wrap. What do you mean? I know, exactly. So it's a cool gadget. It's, I guess it's solar powered and it just had a tacky back and you could stick it to any wall and flip the light switch and it almost operated as like a, I would say, a very bright light, right? Okay. We were selling flashlights. We were selling, so, and even things that might have seemed close to the brand, my other least favorite product was White Out. You don't remember White Out? Yes. And so as I started and I went to my first local store and they were the same 24 bottles of White Out that sat on the, on the cash wrap that had been there for a year. And I was not joking with the team but I was trying to point out, you know, look, if you would have challenged anybody on your team under the age of 30 to go get a bottle of White Out. (laughs) That is part of, there's the physical relevance and then there's the service relevance. So there's any number of services some of our competitors offer some TSA products and some other, you know, services that are maybe convenient and easy and that might be right for them or we're only 1,300 square feet. So every decision, right? Every corner of that store needs to work really hard. So let's just focus on what, are we gonna be the absolute best-knit and innovate from the core? So that is kind of the strategy that we've been on for the last couple of years, innovating from the core, which means digitizing a lot of our products and services because this comes back to how does the customer want to receive them or want to interact with them. So as an entirely brick and mortar business, there are more people participating in the digital economy than ever before. We need to earn our way into the digital economy in a way that is relevant and simple to our customers and to our brand. So what does that look like in practice? We have a very big print offering. It's an asset-intensive physical, you know, business. The next gen customer wants to interact that way online and so we have launched an e-commerce print platform, really proud of it. But the revenue is allocated back to the franchisees and, you know,
And what we want them to do is invest back into that product back in that's back into that customer right because we just got and but we got them the way that they wanted to be met. And in this way we can expand the products and the capabilities that maybe not every store has. If you want to order a very complicated print job and you just have to walk into a store and a store would have to say no we can't do that. We want them to say yes and provide a very different digital capability to do it. Mailbox rentals doesn't sound like the most modern of products. So we wanted to make the renewal process and the alert process much easier, more digital, more communication so that the customer always had a sense of confidence. And so we're thinking about a lot of those things and when we talk about, you know, where did all this package volume come from? There's this notion of starting online and finishing in the store. So we have more people, again, participating in the digital economy that I remember before, they're conducting commerce on platforms and those platforms have integrated shipping systems. You still need a way to get that product into the network. So at 5500 plus locations, we serve as the physical gateway to the network. And in that way, this is a convenience for our customer that they value and then they use the other products and services across their timeframe with us. So that's where, if the example of simplicity doesn't mean we're not relentlessly innovating on everything that we do, it's just relentlessly innovating on the really good bits that we have and that will be our competitive differentiator. So a couple of things you're talking about, I want to kind of double click into. And I mean, we have a similar opportunity, I guess I would say, in that all this evolving technology that's coming around in so many ways is a huge enabler for our proposition around service and customer satisfaction. How do you think about the new technologies that are available and staying on top of that in a way that doesn't have you be totally reactive? I mean, not necessarily that you have to be the pioneer, but that you're at the right place at the right time with technologies that are going to improve the customer experience. So, you know, the right place at the right time, Pete, you'll recall when we were all sitting around various tables at different ends of the coast, debating whether people would ever buy clothes or footwear online, right? Yeah, we have. But you've got to touch it, feel it, feel it, feel it, see it, you know, and how that technology evolved and so we all evolved with it at the right pace. I think certainly the AI discussion is an interesting and an urgent one because it's here. It might feel new-ish, but the reality is that the build of this technology and the evolution has been happening for decades. And so it is here and we all have to confront how we're going to adopt it. But I think there's two things that come to mind with three things that come to mind. The unlimited potential, just again, the enabler, right? But the operational discipline it's going to take to leverage that technology. Your data sets have to be pretty good and pretty clean. Your process flows have to be pretty consistent and identifiable. So there's some really good operational discipline work that organizations need to reflect on to say in order to marry the AI experience, right? We've got to get really good at some of the basics. And lastly, what I hope to see is leaders like you, leaders like me, leaders like others that I've been with this past week coming to bear and playing a bigger role in the authorship of the outcome or the direction of AI and commercial environments. There's certainly by necessity led a lot by tech visionaries and the technology organizations. And so their mandate is how do we believe in what could totally be possible, right? And I think that there is a need for a community to have a point of view that we start to shape and share and bring to bear for these organizations that are doing some brilliance work so that the outcome for our customers, our businesses, our communities, our people are even more positive than what's capable and available to us today. Great. So, Sarah, you guys have had a ton of success and it's inspiring to hear about what you're working on. But I can only imagine in your mind, there's opportunities that you have and things that you need to lean into that you want to try to improve. What's kind of top of mind for you in terms of things that you're really working on? Yeah. So we have a billion trips into the UPS store every year. Wow. There's, yeah. And we're a lot bigger than people think. So that's a lot of opportunity to create meaningful customer connection, great experiences. It's also an opportunity for things to go poorly. And I think on the balance, we do a great job. But I think that one of our greatest opportunities is in issue resolution. How do we manage the post-purchase transaction, especially for some of our more common complicated pieces like shipping, like next day air products? And that part, just by the virtue of what we do, right? Our stores take it. We hand it to a UPS driver. And so it's a big complicated network from there. And we've taken a lot of steps to automate that process, give our franchisees and our customers better visibility into what the issue resolution journey looks like. But obviously, the best call into customer care is the one that never happens. So we want it to do everything that we can to prevent that upfront. I think we've put a lot of work behind that. And we need to be faster, better, cleaner, more responsive in that post-purchase journey. And you're basically talking about when things don't go right. How do you guys handle that? How do you recover? How do you recover for the customer? And just make it easy. Because I mean, when something is going wrong, that's a much harder transaction, right? To handle over the counter with something is going wrong. Yeah, it is, but it's also at least from our experience. That's where your customer service commitment is. Yes, it's almost the proverbial rubber meets the road. But the tire is revealed. But yeah, that's where it's revealed is when you can solve a problem when things have not gone well. And you're right, there's a lot of things involved with what you guys do that involve. A lot of touches, a lot of complicated processes. And it's not always going to go perfectly, but how you guys handle that is how customers are going to end up feeling about you guys as, you know, what your service reputation is. And clearly they, they like it or you wouldn't be getting voted number one every time. But it's an evergreen problem. We have the same thing. We've got to think about how we can do a better job of meeting customers with solutions when they have issues. Well, and empowerment is absolutely at the core of that, right? But I get because it's post purchase trends, I operationalizing empowerment on the backside is it's a little bit more difficult, right? So that's where I, our team is putting a lot of our gaze there as well. So the last question I want to ask you is what advice do you have for us? I mean, we're trying like you to be relevant and modern and successful. So I'm just curious, you know, from your personal experience with Dordstrom and understanding what we do, what advice would you have for us? One, I do want to start from a place of gratitude of when, when, when the request came, I, it's a Nordstrom wants to talk to us. Nordstrom. Thank you. And, and I, and I think that that behavior, that curiosity, that commitment to just the question that you asked is so core to everything that I was always taught about looking towards Nordstrom as, as a model to emulate because you are asking that question. And so I want to thank you for that. My recommendation and it's not unique to Nordstrom, it comes back to the simplicity question. By both necessity and opportunity, we've, we've all come to ask a lot from our stores, right? So they are, they're fulfillment centers. We've got the credit card. We've got the loyalty program. We've got email capture SMS capture. We've got all the selling and floor standards. We've got the promotions we've got. And I think that there is a universal challenge we faced it too, right? Especially post COVID. Have we balanced all of the things that we're now asking the stores to do in a way that continues to put that customer experience forward, right? And we have the right staffing models to do that. We have the right training models to do that. Are there, are there functions that we should that are better served either in different parts of the stores or different parts of the customer journey? And how do we continue to delineate loyalty? So I don't know that it's unique to Nordstrom as much as it is to our industry at large, and especially, you know, brick and mortar presence. And I think even at 1300 square feet, we're asking the same questions as to say, how do we best meet all of the needs that we're now pushing into the stores? And do we need to edit a little bit? I don't know the answer, but it's something that rattles around in my mind.
Yeah, no, that all makes a lot of sense to me. Hey, Sarah, it's been fun for me to spend some time with you. I honestly find this very inspiring. And like I said, there's mental notes and literal notes going to be taken because there's so much direct application of what you're trying to do and how it impacts your business with what we're trying to do. And it's nice to be able to talk to someone that has something going on. It's very, very similar like this as super relatable. So I really appreciate your time and willingness to talk through all this. And again, I want to congratulate you on the success you've had there. It's super impressive. Thank you. Thank you so much. And what an honor it is for me to be, I've been fan-girling all morning. I'm like, I can just touch you. Well, look, and I'm glad we know each other now because if there's any opportunity for us to be able to share information, I want to make sure you know that I'm up for that call anytime. Yeah. Thank you so much for doing this and congratulations to you. Thank you so much for having me. What an honor it is to be here. Well, that's the show. We're really glad you're with us on this journey. And we hope you keep listening. The easiest way to do that is subscribe to the Nordipod wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please take a minute to give us a like, a share, and a review so other people can find this thing too. For more information about the show, head to Nordstrom.com/Nordipodcast or follow us on our Instagram page at the Nordipod to stay up to date on new episodes, announcements, and more. We'd also really like to hear about your experience with Nordstrom. So, if you have a story about how you receive great service or even bad service, send us an email to
[email protected]. You can even give us a call, leave a voice mail, and you may just get a chance to talk to me personally on a future episode of the show. So, that number is 206-594-0526. If you don't have them, have a specific Nordstrom story. We'd also just love to hear your thoughts on the show itself. Do you have guest suggestions or interesting parts of the business that we've never touched on before? Let us know what you'd like to hear. Drop us a line and be part of the Nordipod.
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