Nord­strom is a brand that must be doing some­thing right. With the com­pa­ny’s share price gain­ing 120 per­cent in five years, the brand’s prof­its have out­per­formed com­pet­ing retail­ers, and the com­pa­ny has built a strong and engaged cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ty that will no doubt ensure con­tin­ued suc­cess. So how is the retail­er using inte­grat­ed tech­nolo­gies to pro­vide an excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and win over con­sumers at cru­cial moments?

SMACIT (a.k.a. social, mobile, ana­lyt­ics, cloud, and Inter­net of Things) tech­nol­o­gy and appli­ca­tion has been marked as a trans­for­ma­tive set of tech­nolo­gies for brand mar­ket­ing strate­gies. A recent HBR arti­cle dis­cussing the strength of Nord­strom’s dig­i­tal strat­e­gy explained how the brand’s abil­i­ty to align cus­tomer expe­ri­ence goals to SMACIT capa­bil­i­ties has been a key dri­ver for the brand’s incred­i­ble suc­cess.

The arti­cle dis­cussed how Nord­strom have lever­aged tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties as a means of opti­miz­ing user expe­ri­ences. Defined by the term ‘SMACIT’, it has seen the intro­duc­tion of every­thing from social apps to build aware­ness, to pur­chase point and per­son­al­ized inno­va­tions.

“Between 2004 and 2014, Nord­strom made an extra­or­di­nary series of invest­ments, each aimed square­ly at that same pur­pose of pro­vid­ing a fab­u­lous cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. First came a new point-of-sale sys­tem that includ­ed per­son­al book soft­ware so that sales­peo­ple could track indi­vid­ual cus­tomer requests and needs online. This was fol­lowed in quick suc­ces­sion by the launch of an inno­va­tion lab, the cre­ation of Nord­strom apps, the intro­duc­tion of pop­u­lar social apps that cre­at­ed buzz as well as mobile check­out, sup­port for sales­peo­ple tex­ting, and ulti­mate­ly the acqui­si­tion of a cloud-based men’s per­son­al­ized cloth­ing ser­vice.”

Why Has Nordstrom Invested Heavily In Technology?

Here are four rea­sons Nord­strom has invest­ed in tech­nol­o­gy, and is cre­at­ing class-lead­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ences.

1. To Provide Great Customer Service

Great cus­tomer ser­vice is a val­ue deeply instilled into the cul­ture at Nord­strom; employ­ees and staff have built a rep­u­ta­tion for being friend­ly and capa­ble, and con­sumers know they will be treat­ed fair­ly when they shop there because of the com­pa­ny’s “no ques­tions asked” return pol­i­cy. The great cus­tomer ser­vice has been backed by tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions. For exam­ple, the com­pa­ny recent­ly intro­duced mobile point of sale capa­bil­i­ties that enable cus­tomers to check out any­where in store, negat­ing the need to queue up and wait to pay (and reduc­ing the chance of poten­tial trans­ac­tion aban­don­ments or sec­ond thoughts about a pur­chase). The imple­men­ta­tion was so effec­tive that Nordstrom’s saw a 15 per­cent increase in Q1 2012 (com­pared to 2011 equiv­a­lent fig­ures) in the weeks imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the intro­duc­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy.

Oth­er exam­ples of cus­tomer expe­ri­ences enhanced by tech­nol­o­gy includes the keep­ing of a ‘Per­son­al Book’ for all Nord­strom cus­tomers. The tech­nol­o­gy keeps track of per­son­al infor­ma­tion as well as every trans­ac­tion a cus­tomer has made from a retail­er, enabling mar­ket­ing teams to do every­thing from send­ing a birth­day mes­sage to mak­ing the best rec­om­men­da­tions for a cus­tomer in email mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.

2. To Appeal To Key Audiences

Nord­strom has man­aged to do some­thing that many oth­er retail­ers strug­gle with: appeal­ing to mil­len­ni­als. The brand has man­aged to build a rep­u­ta­tion, not only as a mod­ern and for­ward think­ing com­pa­ny adept in the prac­tice of using dig­i­tal media (as of this writ­ing, the com­pa­ny has more than 540,000 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter and sent over 153,000 tweets), but also as a brand of gen­uine authen­tic­i­ty.

How does Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. con­tin­ue to inspire you? #Mar­tin­LutherK­ing­Day pic.twitter.com/mqn1fXQbIZ

— Nord­strom (@Nordstrom) Jan­u­ary 19, 2015

Nord­strom uses Twit­ter to engage with con­sumers nat­u­ral­ly, as well as cre­ate aware­ness about prod­ucts and pro­mo­tions.

Nord­strom is also one of the few brands that has braved the chal­lenge of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a ded­i­cat­ed brand forum on red­dit, with a num­ber of staff mem­bers con­duct­ing AMA (Ask-me-any­thing) inter­views, and engag­ing with red­di­tors in a nat­ur­al, authen­tic way.

3. To Streamline User Experiences

When it comes to dig­i­tal media, Nord­strom is way ahead of the game. While oth­er brands might typ­i­cal­ly be in con­ver­sa­tions about which tac­tics are best for which chan­nel, Nord­strom is sim­ply using the plat­forms to tie togeth­er dif­fer­ent moments of user intent into one seam­less user expe­ri­ence.

Con­sumers can, for exam­ple, pur­chase items direct­ly on Insta­gram:

The high­ly visu­al nature of Nord­strom’s prod­ucts means shop­ping on the plat­form, where users are also able to com­ment and dis­cuss images with oth­er users, pro­vides con­sumers with an inno­v­a­tive and enjoy­able method to shop, with­out the com­pli­ca­tion of hav­ing to use mul­ti­ple devices or soft­ware to make a pur­chase.

“This is the first expe­ri­ence of its kind, and it’s the clos­est thing out there—that I’m aware of—in terms of deliv­er­ing a seam­less shop­ping expe­ri­ence,” accord­ing to Bryan Gali­peau, direc­tor of social media at Nord­strom.

Nord­strom also makes excep­tion­al use of Pin­ter­est. For a cou­ple of years now, Nord­strom has used Pin­ter­est to gauge con­sumer opin­ions and mea­sure the pop­u­lar­i­ty of their prod­ucts. These dig­i­tal insights help inform in-store prod­uct strat­e­gy, and demon­strates how much the brand val­ues what its cus­tomers have to say.

“Pin­ter­est is in many ways the world’s biggest wish list – and so it also fits well with our goal of hav­ing our mer­chan­dise show up in our customer’s wish lists…” Gali­peau said. “The cus­tomer is vot­ing with their pins to tell us what they think is hot – and we’re lis­ten­ing close­ly.”

4. To Tie Together Difference Channels And Disciplines

Tech­nol­o­gy is one thing, but a brand can real­ly improve user expe­ri­ences with the inte­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms and ser­vices. Nord­strom has tak­en an ongo­ing, com­mit­ted approach to deliv­er omnichan­nel dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences.

• Nord­strom’s social media chan­nels are con­nect­ed to the brand’s web­site and phys­i­cal stores.
• Nord­strom’s app is also inte­grat­ed with both Nordstrom.com, and the retail­er’s inven­to­ry man­age­ment sys­tem, which enables users to check stock lev­els for the items they are inter­est­ed in and, should they want to, get them deliv­ered to their clos­est store.
• Per­son­al Book is used to inform email strat­e­gy, and email is again tied to data from web­site brows­ing and social media to form a com­plete pic­ture.
• Nord­strom have also launched new ecom­merce plat­forms to cater to spe­cif­ic user needs, such as men’s brands Bono­bos and Trunk Club, and the retail­er’s ded­i­cat­ed flash sale site, Hautelook.

Connecting Channels And Technology To Achieve Exceptional Results

It’s the fourth of these points that has made the most dif­fer­ence to Nord­strom’s suc­cess. While many brands are heav­i­ly invest­ed in new tech­nolo­gies, active on all the right chan­nels, and com­mit­ted to using dig­i­tal media as a way to engage with con­sumers, few man­age to con­nect tech­nolo­gies, plat­forms, and chan­nels to the same extent as Nord­strom.

Even few­er brands have man­aged to use the many dig­i­tal and retail tech­nolo­gies in a way that pri­or­i­tizes con­nect­ed­ness and inte­gra­tions between those tech­nolo­gies; and also as a way to empow­er staff and mar­keters to deliv­er on class-lead­ing con­sumer expe­ri­ences that dis­tin­guish­es the brand in the minds of con­sumers. Accord­ing to the HBR arti­cle:

“[Nord­strom] have not only intro­duced new chan­nels, but they have inte­grat­ed them in ways that empow­er employ­ees and cus­tomers. Nord­strom hasn’t used SMACIT to devel­op a dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­el — they have fur­ther dig­i­tized their busi­ness mod­el, and pur­sued their pur­pose, using SMACIT.”

The abil­i­ty to con­nect tech­nol­o­gy and excel­lent cus­tomer expe­ri­ences into a uni­fied whole that push­es in the same direc­tion makes for an unri­valed val­ue propo­si­tion, and ulti­mate­ly, stel­lar finan­cial per­for­mance. The HBR arti­cle also had a warn­ing for brands that “strug­gle to achieve this kind of inte­gra­tion.” They will, the arti­cle states “end up with a bunch of clever but iso­lat­ed SMACIT appli­ca­tions, attempt­ing to com­pete with com­pa­nies who own an inno­va­tion engine that con­stant­ly rais­es the bar for delight­ing cus­tomers.”

For many brands that will paint a famil­iar pic­ture. These brands must fig­ure out how to fol­low the exam­ple that Nord­strom has set.