Last week, I placed an order with an online grocery delivery service. Everything arrived in good shape, which is what I’ve come to expect from that particular company. However, not even 5 days later, some of the fruit had gone bad. So, I called the customer service line to see what they could do.

The customer support rep credited my account for the $4 worth of bad fruit. But her subsequent comments surprised me. In particular, the rep said that they can’t be responsible for how long fruit and other produce will last, since so many factors are involved. That may be true, but if the fruit shows up looking fresh and you store it under the right conditions, shouldn’t it last for at least a week?

Ultimately, this comes down to setting the right expectations for customers. When you’re dealing with fruits and vegetables that may spoil quickly, you should either provide an expiration date or some advice like “Consume within 3 days after purchase”. Then, make sure the information is plainly visible at the point of sale, whether it’s online or in a traditional retail store. While this probably won’t eliminate every complaint arising from spoiled produce, it should at least help create a better understanding about how long fresh foods should last once they’ve arrived in customers’ kitchens.

If you’re purchasing a gift for someone who lives far away, it’s hard to deny the convenience of buying that gift — complete with gift wrapping and a card — from an online retailer. Lately, though, I’ve noticed that one well-known retailer seems to be going a little overboard with pitching their gift options.

While placing an order for a few mundane items, their website presented me with gift wrap options in the shopping cart, plus at least two places during the checkout process. I even had to un-check one of those options, despite never having selected it in the first place. The repeated attempts at getting me to use the gift features made the purchasing process more cumbersome — and would surely border on infuriating for someone who accidentally selected and paid for gift wrapping.

It’s important to let customers know that you offer gift wrapping and other value-added features. But if the presentation of these services starts to feel less like a helpful reminder and more like a hard sell, then it’s probably time to be a little more conservative about how you’re delivering your message.

During a recent trip, I found myself delayed in the airport for more than 5 hours. I spent a good portion of this time catching up on things from my mobile phone, which ended up being easier said than done. The reason? The wireless reception was incredibly spotty.

I wasn’t the only one experiencing this problem. Another poor soul paced back and forth to different areas of the terminal, desperately seeking a location where he could make a phone call without the audio dropping out. I thought that all the cell phone providers put up special antennas in airports to ensure good signal strength, but maybe that’s just an urban legend.

No matter what caused the issues that day, and regardless of whether you’re talking about cellular or Wi-Fi, there’s an easy way to minimize the impact of reception problems within a high-traffic venue. In short, just figure out where the reception tends to be the strongest, and label those areas as “Best Reception Zone”, or something similar. You can even get corporate sponsors — such as mobile providers — to pay for the cost of the signage.

Will the reception always be ideal in those areas? Probably not, since there are numerous factors involved. However, giving customers a head start on finding decent reception is a lot better than forcing them to start from scratch on their own.

As I arrived at the airport last week, I was greeted with the longest security line I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t even a peak travel day, since we left a few days before the holiday weekend, which made me wonder: why the heck was the line so long? Other passengers echoed the same sentiment, and it quickly became the dominant discussion topic among the many hundreds of us who were stuck in the queue.

Needless to say, the general attitude changed from curious to impatient to angry within about 20 minutes. And even when we finally made it through the line, I had no idea what caused the original delay. Days later, the situation remains a mystery to me.

There’s an important takeaway here. People have an innate desire to understand why things happen — especially when those events lead to a major hassle for them. In my example, everyone would have been a lot calmer if the airport put up a sign or made an audio announcement explaining what was causing the extraordinarily long line. By conveying the reasons behind adverse situations to the people who are affected, you’ll go a long way towards putting their minds at ease — while making things easier for the staff that has to interact with those customers, as well.

Let’s say there’s a certain product that you’ve sold for years, maybe even decades. It’s timeless and classic, and people buy it regardless of the season or what might be trendy that year. Customers expect that they can walk into any of your stores or visit your website, and the signature item will be there. So, you make sure to always keep that product in your inventory.

Seems obvious, right? A recent experience of mine proved otherwise. I was shopping at one of the largest stores in a major chain, and they had eliminated virtually all of the inventory of a signature product. Apparently, their merchandising people thought it was more important to have 100 different variants of questionable summer styles, at the expense of carrying the products they’ve long been known for.

The result was predictable: I couldn’t buy the product I wanted. And I’m sure other customers ran into the same problem and ended up buying less than they intended to. So if you’re planning to shove your signature items aside in favor of some seasonal products, just remember that the opportunity cost of this decision may be greater than you bargained for.

Last weekend, I went to a well-known clothing store to buy a few items. They were running a very attractive 30% off deal, and as luck would have it, every item I wanted was also available on a “Buy 2 or more, get them for only $XYZ each” special.

Everything looked good until I got to the checkout area. The cashier said that I couldn’t use the 30% off deal, since the items were already “on promotion”. So, I handed him a printout that clearly stated the discount was valid “on your entire purchase” and for both “regular priced or sale items”. When he insisted that items “on promotion” are different than items “on sale”, I asked to see the manager.

After a brief conversation, the manager applied the correct pricing and discounts. Rather than blaming the cashier for this issue, I believe the real cause is an overly complex promotional scheme at the corporate level, which has trickled down to a confusing set of rules that individual store employees have a hard time making sense of.

All else equal, simplifying your sales and discounts and promotional offerings will make things easier for employees and customers alike. But if legacy systems or other roadblocks stand in the way of meaningful changes at the corporate level, you should empower your frontline employees to take the necessary actions to reconcile those policies with customers’ reasonable expectations.

A few weeks ago, I placed an online order with a clothing retailer that I’ve been very happy with in the past. Unfortunately, all of the items that I received in this order were either the wrong size or of a low quality. Since the retailer charges for returns by mail, I walked to the local store to see about doing a refund or exchange.

Upon arriving at the store and seeing their inventory, it was immediately apparent that an exchange would not be the right move. They didn’t carry any of the products I was returning, so my only options were to buy something different, or just get my money back. I opted for a simple refund, and I’ve yet to order any replacement items.

This experience underscores the importance of making exchanges as hassle-free as possible. Think about it: if the customer wants a different size or a different item, do you really want to charge them for that privilege? The prevailing wisdom — except at forward-thinking retailers like Amazon and Zappos — seems to be to penalize the customer for exchanges.

But if these policies push people away from exchanges and towards refunds, it’s rather obvious that the retailer is the ultimate loser. That sale is gone, without an offsetting exchange to replace it, and the customer will probably think twice before shopping there again.

Anyone who has studied business or marketing is probably familiar with the razor-and-blade business model: you sell the durable item together with a starter supply of refills for a very low price, and then enjoy high margins on the subsequent refills once customers are hooked.

Yet despite the success of countless variants of this sales strategy, some retailers are doing it all wrong. For instance, I’ve seen both online and traditional retailers who sell popular dental care tools, yet don’t carry the refills that every buyer of those products will need sooner or later.

This oversight truly leaves money on the table. Just think about what a customer does when they need refills for a product: the first place most people would look is the retailer that they bought the product from to begin with. By failing to carry the refills, you’re throwing that loyalty back in their face, and forcing them to buy the refills from a competitor.

So if your retail inventory includes anything that resembles a razor in the razor-and-blade model, be sure to carry the consumables or refills, too. It’s good for customers, good for revenues, and especially good when it comes to maintaining the loyalty and brand equity that you’ve worked so hard to create.

I’m surprised that companies don’t make a greater effort to reach out to the people who use their gift cards, in order to determine how satisfied they are with the experience. Customers who visit the venue regularly will probably report that they were perfectly happy to receive a gift card from that establishment. But the feedback from those who wouldn’t have gone there otherwise may speak volumes about what’s right — or wrong — with the business.

Did gift card users say it was hard to make the trip to your restaurant? Maybe you need more locations. Did they describe the menu options as too pricey? Perhaps you should offer a few lower-cost dishes. Whatever the specific questions you decide to ask, a certain subset of gift card users represents a valuable opportunity to essentially look into a crystal ball and learn how people who wouldn’t normally be your customers think. And if you harness this information properly, it can be a very effective tool for reaching a whole new group of prospects.

These days, it seems like virtually all the large websites — including some of the most prominent online retailers — are allocating some of their on-screen real estate to advertising. And I’m not just talking about promoting their own products and services. Instead, these areas usually carry a rather random assortment of third-party ads, too.

However, once you start mixing ads for your own products with ads from unrelated third parties, conversion rates are likely to decline. Visitors will quickly come to associate those ad blocks with irrelevant spam, and will be more likely to ignore them during future visits.

Is there any way to encourage customers to pay more attention to the in-house ads that appear in mixed ad blocks? One fairly simple approach comes to mind. Just design the in-house ads so it’s immediately obvious that they represent your own products and services. Include a prominent logo, brand name, and color scheme that ties them into the rest of the site. And make sure that the in-house ads represent a large enough percentage of the total ad inventory, so that people don’t automatically tune out that entire area of the page.

Of course, it’s a lot easier to get visitors to pay attention to your message when you eliminate third-party ads and other distractions entirely. But if your business model dictates that these elements must be present, the approach I’ve outlined above should increase the percentage of visitors that pay attention to your in-house ads and take action, thus driving conversion rates higher.