While visiting Vancouver last week, I noticed something strange on the restaurant menus. No, it wasn’t the high sales taxes that I expected from being in a major Canadian city: GST was only 5%, which is less than half what we pay in Chicago. Rather, the odd thing was that some restaurants charge for refills […]

People are traveling less these days, and airport revenues are down. Here are a few ways that airports could get more people interested in traveling and increase per-passenger revenue: – Introduce airport loyalty programs that aren’t tied to a specific airline, e.g. get a $20 meal coupon for every three flights you take. – Provide […]

Generally speaking, high rise buildings are more energy efficient than single family homes, at least on a per-resident basis. One of the innovations that makes this possible is sharing a series of large, efficient air conditioners, water heaters, and plumbing networks across hundreds or even thousands of people. However, these designs also introduce a problem: […]

For a restaurant owner, periodic health inspections are probably viewed as a nuisance. Pass the inspection, avoid any sanctions from the city health department, and move on to the next task. Accordingly, restaurants are motivated to do just enough to pass, with little incentive to go beyond the minimum requirements. Obviously, this is a poor […]

Have you ever contacted a company for tech support, and gotten one of those anonymous responses that ends with something like “Sincerely, Acme Corp Tech Support”. I’m not talking about the email address — lots of companies legitimately use a single mailbox for that. Rather, I’m referring to cases where there is no name whatsoever […]

People use store locators all the time, but I wonder if businesses are taking advantage of the wealth of data that these tools can provide. In particular, I’m interested in the cases where someone types in a zip code, city/state, or cross streets, and there are zero matching results. I doubt these are logged right […]

I’ve had my fair share of problems with other companies’ support and contact pages lately. One thing that really annoys me is when they don’t tell you upfront about what’s available to you. In other words, it’s very frustrating to look all over for an email address or phone number, only to later discover that […]

Organizations that operate based on an appointment system seem to be getting very good at automating the grunt work inherent in that approach. For example, you can book a doctor’s appointment or an oil change or a dinner reservation online, without having to pick up the phone. And to make sure you don’t forget about […]

More and more TV shows seem to be relying upon product placements as a way to monetize their content. After all, you can’t fast-forward through these subtle (or not so subtle) spotlights on a product, since the placements are intertwined with the narrative. Ok, I get that part. But what’s the point of inserting your […]