In a world where con­ve­nience is king, mega online retail­ers con­tinue to stake their claim. Ama­zon, ShopRun­ner, Wal­Mart, Tar­get, etc. all pro­vide online access to every­day and niche items that can be deliv­ered to your door with a swipe of your credit card (not really but you get the idea). Lost in the excite­ment of a grow­ing e-​​commerce mar­ket is yours truly… the cus­tomer. Sure, it would be easy to join the masses and assim­i­late to the grow­ing con­scious­ness that all online cus­tomers are more inter­ested in coupons and ship­ping costs and less con­cerned with cus­tomer ser­vice. How­ever, did any­one notice that customer-​​centric com­pa­nies like Nord­strom con­tinue to build value and earn a profit?

Has the appre­ci­a­tion for excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice become a thing of the past, reserved only for those that strug­gle to choose between dri­ving the BMW or the Jeep Grand Chero­kee or is it avail­able to com­mon folk as well? Oper­at­ing on the premise that every­day peo­ple also enjoy a “per­sonal shop­per” expe­ri­ence in addi­tion to the con­ve­nience of online shop­ping the rise of fran­chised online stores like Spice​ofLife​-Shop​.com is becom­ing quite appeal­ing. Now, don’t let your head explode but appar­ently it is pos­si­ble to com­bine the high tech busi­ness approach with high touch as well. Ulti­mately, the cus­tomers will decide for themselves.