If you purchase an item and have it gift wrapped by the retailer, the odds are quite good that they’ll remove the price tags and include a special receipt that doesn’t show any prices. From what I understand, this is standard practice for gift-wrapped orders. As a result, you don’t have to wonder whether there are any prices hidden inside the package.

But what happens when you purchase a gift and choose to wrap it yourself? Sure, you might be able to request a gift receipt, but there’s still the pesky issue of price tags. For some items, the price tags are clearly visible, so you can just remove the tag or the portion that has the price on it. However, for products that come in a sealed box or a plastic pouch that can’t be opened and resealed, there’s no easy way to tell if a price tag is lurking inside.

To take the guesswork out of this situation, retailers should affix a small, removable sticker to factory-sealed items to indicate that there’s a price tag inside. That way, shoppers who are buying them as gifts will know to carefully open the package and remove the price tag. Of course, it would be better if prices appeared only on easily-accessible tags or were printed on the outside of sealed packages. But short of changing how these items are produced, adding a stick-on price tag reminder would be a big help to customers — especially during the holidays and other times when gift giving is at its peak.

Last week, I got a rather peculiar email from a company whose products I use. Based on the text in the “From” field, I could easily see that the message was from the department that handles online account management and bill payment. But the subject line was another story. It said “Your login is changing”, which immediately made me anxious about whether the changes would have an impact on how I use my account.

If someone told you that “Your login is changing”, how would you interpret that statement? For me, it suggests things like:

– Your username and/or password won’t be valid anymore, and you’ll need to create new ones.

– The process for signing in will be different, maybe involving the security images and security questions that are common with online banking sites.

– You’ll need to login from a different page.

Well, it turns out that none of these was actually the case. In fact, after reading the entire body of the email, I learned that the company was simply redesigning the account management interface and adding some new features. Customers didn’t have to do anything differently, and existing usernames and passwords would remain the same.

In other words, the whole thing was a false alarm, caused by sloppy work with the subject line. To remedy this problem, the company should have written a clear and descriptive subject line such as “We’re enhancing your account management site” or “New features for online account management”. That way, customers wouldn’t feel any anxiety over being forced to change their login credentials or having to use a different login process. Instead, users could focus on whether the new features were useful for them, which is what the company set out to inform their customers about in the first place.

When I was at the dentist the other day, I received an unexpected treat: trial-sized packages of a few dental care products that I use. As pretty much everyone knows, it’s a hassle to cram all your personal care products into a single plastic bag when traveling on a plane. Thus, swapping out a few larger items for the trial sizes is a big help — especially if the trial items are small enough to use on a single trip and then throw away before heading home.

Receiving this relative bounty of dental care products made me wonder: why aren’t more trial-sized items sold in stores? The manufacturer is already spending the money to produce the small packages, which apparently get distributed to doctors or dentists as free samples. Bringing these same items to stores where the normal-sized items are sold shouldn’t be that difficult.

In fact, my local CVS has entire shelves dedicated to small, carry-on friendly products. Looking at the random assortment of items featured there, I get the feeling that very few manufacturers are making any effort to bring their trial-sized products to the retail channel. If that’s actually the case, then a brand that makes this a priority should be able to achieve significant distribution for their trial-sized items, and reap the benefits of a new revenue stream in the process.

I’ve been keeping track of the new product announcements from several of the major wireless carriers, in the hopes of identifying a suitable replacement for my current cell phone. As the holiday shopping season approached, I expected all of the carriers to release a flurry of long-rumored handsets. However, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and none of the new models I’ve been waiting for were ever released.

Instead, it appears that the wireless providers chose to focus on promoting their “4G” networks. Ironically, there are very few phones available for these faster networks right now, so consumers have a very limited set of products to choose from. If most of the 4G phones won’t be available until after the holidays, why are the wireless carriers so concerned with advertising their 4G capabilities?

I’m sure part of this behavior is a classic “keeping up with the Joneses” scenario. Sprint was the first to announce a 4G network, so Verizon and T-Mobile feel like they have to match it, at least from a marketing point of view. But is the holiday shopping season the best time to take up this sort of battle? In short, no.

Here’s a simple rule of thumb: if you’re releasing a new product or service in the period leading up to or during the holiday shopping season, make sure it’s something that consumers can buy and use today. If the new product relies on some other element (such as network upgrades) that won’t be ready until the following year, then don’t release it yet. Instead, focus your holiday efforts on introducing new products that are going to amaze people from the get-go, and leave the pie in the sky stuff for later.

As more and more people start using e-book readers like the Kindle and Nook, the practice of giving e-books as holiday gifts will probably become quite common. In fact, I purchased my first e-book gifts a few days ago. Overall, the process worked smoothly, though I was left wishing for one thing: the ability to delay the delivery of the e-books until a later date.

Normally, instant delivery of e-books is a great thing. You pick out a book, purchase it, and you can start reading it a few minutes later. But when it comes to gifts, instant gratification can be a problem. Aside from those people who are shopping at the last minute, most gift givers want the gift to remain a secret until the day that the recipient would normally be opening their presents. There’s nothing to “open” with an e-book gift, so the logical alternative is to just delay the transmission until a specific date.

Aligning e-book gifts with the normal cycle of gift giving and receiving could be done in several ways. The purchasing process for e-book gifts could let the user choose a future date for delivery of the book. Or, it could allow the notice to be delivered right away, but prevent the recipient from seeing the name of the book and reading it until that date has arrived. Either way, delayed delivery would mimic how people already buy and send gifts today, and make the whole process more appealing. Otherwise, those who are turned off by the all-or-nothing tradeoff of instant delivery will revert to traditional gift giving options, and e-book gifts will have a tougher time gaining mainstream acceptance.

My wife and I changed dentists recently, which meant filling out a pile of “New Patient” forms. As I’ve come to expect, the forms asked for every conceivable piece of information, and some of the questions were repeated two or three times for no apparent reason. All told, it took me a full three hours to fill out the forms for the two of us. Even if you average that out to 90 minutes per new patient, the time that I had to spend on this task was simply outrageous. And I doubt I’m the only person who feels that way about the new patient signup experience at doctors, dentists, and other healthcare providers.

From what I understand, there are several efforts underway to streamline this process. Some practices are moving towards online signup for new patients, or switching to fully electronic health records. But these initiatives are few and far between. I’m guessing that at least 75% of healthcare practices still use paper forms. And every one of those forms is different in some obscure way.

There’s actually a really simple solution to this problem. Trade organizations like the AMA and ADA, or even the federal government, should publish a standardized set of forms for common tasks like signing up a new patient. People could then download these forms from a public-facing website, fill them out once, and just bring a copy whenever they need to visit a new medical provider. Of course, the patient would need to update their master copy if any of their billing information or medical history had changed since the last time they used the form. But that’s still a lot easier than filling out a lengthy form from scratch, like you have to do today.

While many healthcare professionals would welcome the idea of having standard forms available — especially the person who was responsible for maintaining their customized in-house versions — there will always be some offices that insist on collecting additional info. Luckily, it’s easy to accomodate these outliers as well. The standard form would simply include some blank lines labeled “Other Information” to let the office staff capture additional details — such as your cousin’s pet’s favorite color — during the first appointment.

Overall, moving towards standardized forms — even if it’s just for new patient signup — would save huge amounts of time and money. Patients could register at a new practice by simply presenting the forms they already have, and would be far less likely to make mistakes compared to the old method of recanting their life story at the last minute. And by receiving legible and largely error-free forms from new patients, medical and dental offices would have an easier time entering the data into their systems and getting insurance claims paid on time. This is truly a situation where everyone comes out ahead, and I hope that someone with enough pull in the healthcare community will eventually see the light and give standardized forms a try.

Recently, I have been faced with the rather frustrating task of terminating the relationship with a vendor that we hired only a few months ago, and locating a new vendor to replace them. Without getting into the details, the first vendor simply lacked the expertise to complete the project they took on. They weren’t familiar enough with the subject matter, and wanted to charge us extra to bring in a third-party specialist to do what we hired them to do in the first place.

When a vendor says they are capable of performing a task and later admits they can’t get it done, the client is usually faced with no choice but to terminate the relationship. But this entire situation can be prevented. As a vendor, you have an obligation to be upfront with your clients. If there are important caveats or conditions involved with you taking on the project, put them in the contract so there’s no confusion later. This is especially important if the project is outside your area of expertise, or you need to hire subcontractors to get it done.

Granted, it takes time to properly research a prospective client’s needs before agreeing to serve as their vendor, and some clients may walk away if they feel the caveats and conditions are substantial. However, it’s typically better to avoid entering into that type of contract in the first place. By following this approach, you’ll free up your time to work on projects that are a good fit for your expertise, while setting clients free to find a vendor that they won’t have to terminate halfway into the relationship.

The last time I went to the grocery store, I flagged down a manager so that I could convey a rather strange request. You see, during the previous trip, they undercharged me by about $15-20. I didn’t notice the error until after I got home, so I just kept the receipt on hand so I could make things right during my next visit.

When I told the manager about this, he was pleasantly surprised. I guess it’s quite rare for a customer to tell them about an error made in the customer’s favor. Anyways, he thanked me for my honesty, and instructed me to tell the cashier about the missing items so I could pay for them as part of that day’s purchases.

This got me thinking: what’s the best way to handle this situation? Obviously, customers have an obligation to pay for the goods they purchase, but it’s probably not that common for people to go out of their way to do the right thing when the cashier makes a mistake. The ideal solution would make the store whole for the extra items, while encouraging customers to report these issues when they arise.

To meet everyone’s needs in the matter, stores should reward customers who report errors that resulted in them being undercharged. You don’t need to write off the entire amount and let the customer keep the items for free. In fact, the type of people who report these problems probably aren’t expecting a free ride. Instead, give them a small but meaningful concession, like a coupon to use on their next visit. This rewards customers for doing the right thing and helps build a collaborative long-term relationship, while minimizing losses due to errors in the checkout process.

I’ve been using the same brands of paper products (e.g. tissues and paper towels) for years. Actually, I’m so particular about these items that I always make sure to buy the exact product variants that I’ve used before. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I’m quick to notice if the manufacturers have changed something about the products since the last time I ordered them.

In fact, I ran into this exact problem a few days ago. I opened up a new package of what I thought was a tried-and-true product that I’ve purchased many times before. However, the product was thinner and more brittle than how I remembered it. And given that I had used the old design less than 24 hours beforehand, I’m pretty sure something was different about the new batch.

Granted, I don’t know if my experience was due to a widespread change in the product line, or a more limited issue related to the size of the roll, or even a localized manufacturing error. But this did make me think about what a consumer products brand should do after completing changes to a product. In particular, start with some messaging on the package that describes what was changed and why. For instance, you might say the “New thinner design means more paper towels on each roll.” Next, give customers a way to provide feedback on your website or via phone or email if they don’t like the new design. And finally, use that feedback to mitigate their concerns, or at least make things better during the next refresh.

Why bother with all this? Loyal, repeat customers tend to feel a little bit betrayed when a product they always buy is changed without warning or explanation. By keeping those buyers informed about changes and letting them tell you what they like and don’t like, the relationship becomes collaborative instead of confrontational. Rather than thinking that you consider them too dumb to notice a product update and jumping ship to another brand, those repeat customers will develop a sense of pride in helping to evolve the product to meet their needs — even if the update they’re looking for may have to wait until the next revision.

Though I haven’t kept an exact count, I believe my local Trader Joe’s has made significant changes to the store layout at least twice this year. Now, I can certainly understand the need to shake things up once in a while, e.g. to accomodate major changes in the product assortment or new information about how customers move through the particular store. But I also get the feeling that too many of these overhauls is a bad thing.

Each time you make a big change to your store layout, customers have to re-learn where their favorite products are located and may get quite frustrated with the inefficiency of the shopping experience. If it takes people a few months to adjust to the new design, and you change the store layout again right after that, their frustration will be exponentially greater. In other words, there needs to be a substantial cooling-off period following each major update.

As a rough guideline, you should limit store layout changes to one significant overhaul every 12 months. And if you need to make those updates in phases, try to cluster them together into a 30 day window so it just feels like one big change, instead of several changes in a row. By following this approach, you’ll minimize the disruption to shoppers, while mitigating any short-term reduction in revenue that would otherwise occur when customers can’t locate the items they want to purchase.