blogs.conchango.com

The report on the top 50 UK retailers customer services proposition is still in progress.  By progress I mean that all the criteria for evaluating their proposition has been recorded and I now need to review the findings to make some sense of it.   In the meantime as a light aperitif here's a preamble around the all-important Customer ...

Momentum is building for self-service technologies in the real world.  Consumers are adopting these self-service interactions and interacting less with in-store customer services.  Online it's a different story as online shoppers want someone to talk to. In Future Now's 2007 Retail Customer Experience Survey, they recommend ...

From user research and other customer insight I create the primary persona, Siobhan, a fictional portrait of a customer for a high street retailer I am currently working with.  As she slowly comes to life I create a vivid image of this fictional character . It isn't easy sourcing the right photo to reflect the age, gender, and ...

Today is day 1 of the Retail Week Conference 2008.  I arrived in time for the breakfast briefing, sporting a Conchango t-shirt. My trim figure barely made a dent in the XL Conchango t-shirt leaving plenty of room for a couple of colleagues to squeeze in. After a much-needed caffeine injection and over-indulgence in fresh croissants I ...

A web site I once worked on has recently received a trust overhaul and is now lit up like a Christmas tree with all manner of sparkling trust-builders. Whilst the client must be applauded for their endeavour to reassure their customers and engender trust in their online store, simply littering their web site with a generous dollop of ...

There is debate as to who coined the phrase buzzword bingo but Scott Adams undoubtedly took the game global in 1994 when Dilbert was given a buzzword bingo card on his way to a meeting with his boss. The same year that this cartoon was created, the Internet population opened up beyond researchers and academics as the Internet became available ...

Everyone knows Flickr is a great community platform for sharing digital photos with friends and family. However, Flickr is also a great tool for capturing, organising and sharing Design Patterns or collections of Interface Designs.  Here are a few examples of people doing this... DragonVista’s collection of 500+ ecommerce home ...

I walked in to an electrical store this weekend to purchase a Cambridge Audio Azur Receiver but couldn’t find what I was looking for.  There were no sales staff around whatsoever to ask whether they had the item in stock, although a sign read ‘leave us a message and we will try to get back to you within 48 hours’. Sounds strange! ...

Am I one of the rare breed of eBay virgins who has resisted the allure of this auction site for over a decade?  If so, the clan is one man less as I was deflowered this weekend after years of resistance.  I finally succumbed to the charm of eBay as a seller tempted me with a delicious and extremely rare compilation CD (limited to ...

Just before the festive break kicked in some of us took part in Conchango’s Luxury Retail Ecommerce Survey 2007.  We were each allocated a luxury retailer and asked to critique their web site against defined criteria.  We were given a budget and then let loose on our allocated retailer.  I was assigned Tommy Hilfiger.  ...