The death and rebirth of customer experience

Trading online is seductive. No rent. No property tax. No opening hours. It's 24/7/365 and more than that it's worldwide. There's one thing it isn't. Personal. Let's look at two ways to sell CDs.

Rick owns an indie music shop. The sort of shop well satirised in Stephen Frears’s High Fidelity. Rick knows I'm here to research an article, so he ignores me. I wait near the counter watching him study his customers. He is focused on an indie college girl, all pink hair and piercings. She's expertly flicking through a bin of CDs, analysing them at a rate of five per second. Within only a few minutes she has worked through an entire wall, from Air through to Ziggy Stardust. Rick goes through her purchases at the check-out, studying them, and compliments her choices. They chat in detail about up and coming bands, Rick throws in a couple of singles, and asks her what else she was looking for. He takes some notes, and she says she'll be back Saturday morning. "Bring your friend, tell him I'll stock his CD" shouts Richard as she waves goodbye. It would be easy to dismiss this as fruitless flirting, but the seven-foot biker with a basketful of Megadeth receives equal attention. Rick profits when his customers enjoy coming to his shop. He gets it.

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The Creative Bloq team is made up of a group of design fans, and has changed and evolved since Creative Bloq began back in 2012. The current website team consists of eight full-time members of staff: Editor Georgia Coggan, Deputy Editor Rosie Hilder, Ecommerce Editor Beren Neale, Senior News Editor Daniel Piper, Editor, Digital Art and 3D Ian Dean, Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson and Ecommerce Writer Beth Nicholls and Staff Writer Natalie Fear, as well as a roster of freelancers from around the world. The 3D World and ImagineFX magazine teams also pitch in, ensuring that content from 3D World and ImagineFX is represented on Creative Bloq.