You're Somebody Special

First update in a while, so I thought it might be worth writing about something light.

I was in Dallas over the weekend and happened upon the original Neiman-Marcus store. I had not planned on visiting - if I had, I would have skipped the passable drip coffee from the hotel coffee shop in favor of what was - I’m sure - a very fine espresso. Did I even eat breakfast that morning? I don’t remember.

In any case, the store was magnificent. We entered through the women’s shoe department, surrounded by offerings from Prada, Golden Goose, and Christian Louboutin - lovely shoes that cost well north of my last car payment and were approaching my mortgage. Just past the shoes were the coffee bar and the Champagne vending machine. A few workers near women’s fragrance were putting out a number of Christmas items - ornaments, popcorn, chocolate snowmen that melt into sipping cocoa. The men’s fragrances were notable for their quality, lots of high end candles, and a very friendly but very serious sales staff.

Up the escalators I found a Brunello Cucinelli cashmere blazer offered up by a friendly salesman who just moved to Dallas from Birmingham - an Auburn graduate, bless him! My wife and daughter saw a couple of wedding dress fittings that looked immaculate, and while I would never buy a Burberry t-shirt for a toddler, it’s nice to know I have the option.

The smell of the restaurant upstairs was drifted down the escalators, and the idea of a long lunch inside the same store where I could also buy a new Canali jacket was very appealing, indeed.

Of course we left empty-handed before heading to the Pecan Lodge to gorge ourselves on smoked brisket and peach cobbler, but here’s the thing - every single person we encountered in that store was friendly and helpful. The staff took their work and their customers seriously. And there wasn’t anything snobbish about it - my adolescent daughter was welcomed by saleswomen offering dresses that I fear I cannot afford any time soon, and my Auburn friend had me trying on sports coats with no concern for my immediate intentions to make a purchase.

All of that experience reminded me of what customer service could and, in all honesty, should, look like. Take your work seriously. Take yourself and your customers seriously. Even if that person isn’t buying today, you have no idea when they may return. And even if they never do, they are a person who ought to be afforded the same dignity you would offer the man or woman whose purchase might lead to a significant commission. It’s an attitude that has been encapsulated well by The Bear or the work of Sid and Ann Mashburn in their handful of shops around the country, and I felt it last weekend in Neiman-Marcus.

Part of the problem with running a business these days seems to be that no one - neither owners, nor staff, nor customers - really expects anything of anyone. These are difficult jobs, I know. But perhaps if customers took themselves seriously, customer service staff would return the favor. Perhaps if owners and managers understood the concept of service - what a good experience can mean to a person on a bad day - then the work done in our restaurants and our clothing stores would different than it so often does.

The title of this post refers to a marketing line from Parisian, the much beloved Birmingham-based department store was eventually purchased by Saks Fifth Avenue in the late 1990s, later sold to Belk, and eventually closed altogether in the mid-2000s. Every now and then you can still find an old gift box or window decal with the store logo and the tagline: “You’re Somebody Special.” Parisian wasn’t the cheapest department store at the mall, and certainly there were bad customer service experiences from time to time. But for Alabamians of a certain age, there is no other store that inspires such awe and nostalgia.

There’s a reason for that.