I consider myself fairly savvy when it comes to riding elevators. I mean, there’s really not much to it: go to the right bank of elevators, step inside the elevator car, choose your floor, and try not to get in the way of other passengers. But I ran across an elevator setup at a local hotel that left me baffled, even after years of riding elevators on a regular basis.

Apparently, the hotel decided to upgrade their elevator system to a high-tech version. Instead of getting inside and pressing the floor number, you use a touchscreen panel in the lobby area to choose the name of the floor you’re going to. In fact, there’s no buttons inside the car, which surely confuses people who follow another passenger in and never had the opportunity to choose their own destination. Plus, only some of the elevator cars have the touchscreen panel — leaving other cars with the traditional buttons for each floor number.

Sound complicated? It certainly is. And I’m quite certain that a lot of people have been confused by the approach that this particular hotel used. Why am I so sure? Well, they put up a large, surprisingly well-designed instructional poster in the elevator area. This instruction manual had a chart to help people figure out which type of elevator they would be riding, and how to control it. Although the poster was nicely done, the very presence of that sort of instructional aid suggests that something is very wrong with the picture.

In short, if you’ve taken an interface that everyone already knows how to use, and “improved” or “enhanced” it so much that people need an instruction manual to figure out the new version, you’re fighting an uphill battle. When early testing or customer feedback indicates that the new version is too confusing or complex for people to use, you need to think about incorporating visual cues or other elements to help people better associate the old way with the new way. And if it’s too late to make those changes, you may end up having to awkwardly pair up the product with a how-to poster or other instructional tool. Of course, this approach is just a band-aid on top of the design problem, but at least it can serve as a reminder that there’s no substitute for making your products intuitive and usable from the start.

Chicago’s underground Pedway spans a large portion of downtown, but relatively few people even know that it exists. Over the past few years, though, the city has done a nice job at making the Pedway entrances easier to find. There’s a consistent logo and color scheme, and even a few signs that tell passers-by about the businesses that are located inside the Pedway areas.

However, this effort still falls quite a bit short. For instance, the Pedway under the Illinois Center contains dozens of businesses. Yet I doubt more than 3 or 4 of them are mentioned on any of the signs that you can see from street level. If I owned a business in there, I’d be furious at the lack of proper promotion. Imagine how many potential customers have no idea that those businesses even exist!

Fixing the signage really wouldn’t be that hard. Just start with the existing branding and logo, and add something like this: “Enter here for Starbucks, FedEx Office, Potbelly Sandwiches and over 50 other businesses.” Even better, list all of those smaller businesses alphabetically below the anchor tenants, so people looking for a specific company or scanning for a particular specialty could find it easily.

Of course, some portion of the businesses that you list on the signs will come and go over time. This might make it a challenge to keep the signs current. But even if the info is a bit out of date, it’s certainly better than nothing. Considering how obscure most of the businesses inside the Pedway are today, even a modest amount of additional signage should make a huge difference when it comes to bringing in new customers.

While exploring a new underground walkway that connects a few of the other buildings near my apartment, I came across a nice-looking navigational sign. The sign was mounted on the wall just before the entrance to a new mixed-use building, and included an area map along with descriptions for each of the nearby buildings.

On closer inspection, though, my wife pointed out that the sign was actually quite a mess. In particular, about half of the text blocks had no spacing between the words. It was a copy and paste effort gone terribly wrong, and nobody stopped to actually check the text before printing the final output.

This made me wonder: is there a rule of thumb that dictates how closely you should proofread a sign, banner or other outdoor display? Yes, and it’s really just a matter of common sense. First, ask yourself if the sign is:

– Large

– Permanent (or at least semi-permanent)

– Likely to be seen by a lot of people

Next, if it meets any of those criteria, make sure to use extra care when proofreading it. Ideally, ask a colleague or friend to review it once you think it’s correct, since the odds of two people both missing an error are quite slim. And finally, give it a quick reality check before sending it to the print shop. Pay special attention to any mistakes that you fixed earlier in the process, to ensure that everything still flows correctly.

In a perfect world, people would proofread and double-check every document they produce. But realistically, most people will only use this level of care when they think it’s absolutely necessary. Since large, permanent signs in high-traffic areas can quickly become a mockery if they’re full of mistakes, it pays to invest the extra proofreading time to ensure that the text and graphics are 100% correct.

It’s common practice for restaurant menus to omit the prices for some of the more expensive items. This is quite common with seafood, but it can apply to other special dishes, too. But there’s also a reasonable expectation that the prices for any unmarked items will fall within some logical range.

With this in mind, I was rather livid after ordering a few bowls of soup at a pizza place, and getting hit with an outrageous bill. Despite only charging $12-13 for the entire pizza, the vegetable soup was $9 per bowl. I can see that price making sense at a high-end restaurant where the meals cost $25-40 each, or if the soup contained lobster or another costly ingredient. But $9 for a bowl of vegetable soup? Simply outrageous.

I argued with the restaurant and they eventally agreed to lower the bill, but this also made me wonder what the heck they were thinking. My best guess: a lot of customers were trying to order soup instead of entrees to keep the cost down, and the restaurant’s revenue was dropping. So, they decided to combat this trend by just making soup the same cost as a basic entree. And to make things worse, they omitted the price of soup from the menu.

The right way to handle this involves several steps. First, change the soup offerings to include one set of prices for people who order soup with an entree, and then another set of prices for people who order soup as their entire meal. Obviously, the price will be higher when the soup is purchased on its own. Then, make the standalone soup include something extra, like a salad or small pasta side, so it seems like you actually get more value for the higher cost. Finally, print the prices on the menu, or at least provide a price range for the typical soups you sell.

Taken together, these improvements should help the restaurant maintain a steady level of revenues even when people opt for soup as their meal. At the same time, the price and presentation will be much more equitable for customers, and nobody will be shocked by over-inflated soup pricing once the bill arrives.

For a recent business trip, I stayed at the InterContinental San Francisco. The hotel is a bit off the beaten path, but offers very high-quality accomodations at a price that’s quite competitive with other downtown San Francisco properties.

This was actually my second stay at the hotel, so they knew I was a repeat guest. However, the welcome they provided was truly amazing. Here is what I received upon check-in:

– A personal greeting from the guest services manager

– A handwritten note from the reservations manager

– A complimentary bottle of wine, plus a fruit and cheese plate, waiting for me in the room

The InterContinental truly exceeded my expectations, and made me feel like a valued customer. At the same time, I was impressed enough to write about the experience here in this post and tell others about it. I wish every hotel treated repeat guests this well, but the reality is that very few properties even come close. And that creates an opportunity for those hotels that really want to stand out. Give returning customers a warm and enthusiastic welcome, and you’ll be well on your way to earning their long-term loyalty, admiration and respect.

I had some relatives in town for the weekend, and on Saturday night, we decided to try a new restaurant just down the block from where I live. Once we arrived at the door, though, it was clear that our plan wasn’t going to fly. According to the sign in the restaurant window, the venue was closed for a private event.

I’m sure the restaurant priced the rental cost based on how much revenue they would normally take in on a busy Saturday night. But I doubt they considered the loss in business from customers who walked up to the door, got annoyed that they couldn’t eat there, and are less likely to return in the future. To counter this effect, the restaurant needs to offer something to compensate those customers who were turned away.

How might this work? Well, on the same sign that explains when they’re closed to the public, they should add something like this: “We’re sorry that we couldn’t accomodate you today. But if you come back tomorrow and mention this sign, we’ll give you a free appetizer or dessert with your meal.” In practice, it doesn’t really matter what form the offer takes. The important thing is to let customers know that you’re sorry for the hassle, and that you’re willing to reward them for being patient and giving you another try.

Earlier this year, my apartment building installed a large monitor in the common area to show announcements and other building info. Despite my recommendation to purchase a system that’s designed for that purpose, they opted to cobble something together from scratch. It worked fine at first, but now the monitor is down almost all the time.

While they try to sort out the issues with the large monitor, the building put up a message on another set of screens in the elevators. In that message, they apologize for the “intermittent” problems with the large display. Granted, I haven’t been keeping an exact log of each time the screen is up or down. But I’m pretty sure that it’s broken at least 75% of the time. That’s hardly an intermittent problem.

By using a term like “intermittent”, they’re suggesting that the issue is sporadic — maybe once or twice a week, for a brief period of time. Anyone who lives in the building can clearly see that the problem is much worse than that. This creates a disparity between what one side is saying, and what the other side knows to be true. In the process, it insults the intelligence of the person reading the message and erodes trust.

There’s a much better way to approach this type of communication. Just describe the problem fairly and accurately, and tell people what you’re doing to fix it. Sure, a “persistent” or “recurring” issue doesn’t sound as innocuous as an “intermittent” one. But if the problem is happening all the time, your audience already knows it’s out there. Be upfront about the situation, and your audience will thank you for it.

For an author, word of mouth is critical. When readers enjoy a book, they might give that copy to a friend, tell other people about it, or purchase more copies as gifts. All of these lead to higher sales, but I bet only a small portion of readers ever think about doing that type of thing. How can you get more people in the right word of mouth mindset? Simple: provide an appropriate call-to-action at the end of the book.

Yes, I’m aware that many books have a page at the end that tells people about other books from the author or the publisher, or lets people order bulk copies. These look like classified ads or order forms, and rarely make the emotional connection between the reader’s feelings about what they just read, and the action the reader is being asked to take. Instead, I propose using the first page after the book ends — or the back cover — to house something like this:

“Did you enjoy this book? If so, I’d really appreciate if you can pass it along to a friend, tell other people about it, or buy a few copies as gifts. To learn more about this book or see what else I’ve written, visit my website at XYZ. Sincerely, Joe Author”

This call-to-action is short enough to maintain the reader’s attention, personal enough to be taken to heart, and specific enough to make people act upon it. Will everyone rush to take one of the desired actions? Of course not. But if even 5% of the otherwise passive readers are inspired by this targeted message, it should lead to a significant increase in word of mouth recommendations, and a corresponding increase in sales.

Regardless of how often the marketing department talks about cleaner store designs with wider aisles and lower shelf heights, drug stores like Walgreens and CVS always seem to revert back to a jumbled mess of random stuff. The CVS near me is no exception, and it’s sad to watch the “As seen on TV” items and other junk clog up what was once a clutter-free environment. And don’t even get me started on what the place looks like during Christmas season.

When these stores are gradually filled up with stuff that nobody seems to want, management ends up having to offer substantial discounts to clear out that inventory. In fact, my local CVS had a few bins just like that during my last visit. The bins were marked “90% off”, yet nobody was looking at them or buying any of the products in there. Most people love a bargain, but something wasn’t right here.

This situation made me wonder: does offering a discount beyond a certain percentage actually hurt sales? It actually makes sense when you think about it: normal products go on sale for 10%, 25%, or even 50% off — the latter often taking the form of the classic “2 for 1” deal. But how often do you see a good quality product on sale for 75% or 90% off? It just doesn’t happen very often, so consumers automatically assume the item is of poor quality and not worth buying — no matter how low the price.

So if you’re in charge of determining the promotional strategy for a product, stick to discounts of 50% or less. Otherwise, the pricing strategy may backfire, and you’ll end up with the unfortunate trifecta of lower unit sales, lower revenue per unit, and a stagnant pile of inventory gathering dust on the sales floor.

A few weeks ago, I had a problem with my corporate credit card. Long story short, a fraudster in Europe had somehow obtained my card number, and was using it to buy tuxedos and high-end men’s shoes. (I know, you couldn’t make this stuff up.) So, Amex did the logical thing: they cancelled the old card and issued me a brand new card number.

As part of this process, not one but two Amex reps assured me that recurring charges would continue to work with the old card number. They insisted that I would not have to rush to change all the card numbers on file, since I had about 9 months before the recurring charges would stop working on the old number. Not being one to put things off, I decided to update my card number right away. And guess what? A vendor that we buy from every month, in the same dollar amount, told me the old card number had been declined. This was basically the definition of a recurring charge, and showed that Amex was flat out wrong.

Sure, people make mistakes. But two different Amex reps were absolutely certain that the recurring charges would be grandfathered in. I guess someone higher up changed the system, and didn’t bother to tell anyone who actually interacts with customers. Or maybe the feature never existed to begin with.

In any case, a simple recommendation is in order. Whenever you ask customers to rely on a statement that you’ve made, and you have reason to believe that they’ll be making significant changes to their behavior based on what you told them, you really ought to double check the facts at hand. While you might not get any actual complaints from the people you’ve wronged by giving out bad information, you can be sure it’s a mistake that they won’t soon forget.