Welcome to EMC Consulting Blogs

Over four years ago I posted ‘Buy Cheap, Pay Later’, which warned of the perils of purchasing from discount retailers that sell cheap and support their low profit margin by a ‘sod you’ customer services policy. After 4 years of mostly positive online shopping experiences, it’s easy to get complacent and start drifting away from those online ...

  Ouch! Received an email this morning stating that playful design has no place in a business context!   For the last 3 weeks a small team of us have been working on an Enterprise Search application and we finally have something to show for our hard endeavours.  Our Microsoft Surface Enterprise Search demo rears it's pretty ...

Empire Direct demonstrate how a solid online experience can be undermined by failure to address the total customer experience. Customers may come but get the experience wrong and they won’t come back.    As part of my customer service frustration therapy here is how the story went ...   The colours on our CRT TV had seen better ...

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 ...

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 ...

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! ...

Moo.com had a bad day recently – and blogged about it. It’s currently showing on their homepage, titled: Blimey. a non-happy day at MOO. The replies are 99% positive and supportive. One says: "Wow, poor Moo guys. Enjoy the pizza, you deserve it. Big or small business, it’s tough keeping the customers happy on the ...

As more sites offer the same products and services, the Customer Experience becomes the key differentiator.  At a recent team strategy meeting there was considerable discussion around client perceptions of the role of our Customer Experience Consultants.  The Customer Experience covers the entire end-to-end experience but most of ...

According to a new report by the Get Safe Online Campaign, one in ten online shoppers has been the victim of online fraud, each losing an average of £875.  Read the full report at http://www.getsafeonline.org/   We live in a shredding culture where we are continuously being warned of online fraud and ...