Condescending people are the most dangerous type to have interacting with your customers. I’d rather suffer through lazy or rude staff any day of the week. Why? Simply put, issues like laziness and rudeness are cut and dry. When a customer runs into a lazy or rude employee, they assume there’s something wrong with that person’s attitude. The customer gets a little annoyed and then moves on. In other words, that employee is a jerk, but it’s not personal.

On the other hand, condescending staff tend to take what the customer asked for, and use it to make that person feel bad. They insult our intelligence and talk down to us. In other words, they make it personal. This sort of tone is very hard to ignore, and does lasting damage to customer relationships. Plus, the damage is even more severe when condescending staff interact with your smartest and most loyal customers. This customer segment knows they aren’t stupid and is probably more familiar with your products and policies than many of your staff, so talking down to them is a huge insult.

What’s the solution? It starts with training: make sure your employees know that it’s never OK to treat customers like idiots. Run through practice scenarios where staff members answer common questions or address issues that tend to arise on a regular basis. Many employees seem to treat customer interactions as a battle, adopting an us vs. them mentality. I’ve seen this happen when discussing little stuff, like a product that’s priced wrong. Even if the customer comes out ahead, they still feel like they were shortchanged in the transaction.

The key is to help your staff understand that treating people with respect, and giving customers the benefit of the doubt when it’s warranted, is far better than being condescending to everyone who walks in the door. Do this regularly, and a lot more of those customers will keep coming back, rather than relegating your business to their list of places to avoid.

While picking up some prescriptions, I asked the pharmacist if she could change the date that some of them automatically refill each month. Among other benefits, synching up the dates would eliminate the duplicate calls that I receive when each prescription is ready. Since the pharmacy has the technology to track and process these automated refills, I figured that changing the refill date would be an easy request.

To my surprise, the pharmacist told me that changing the refill date was impossible. “The computer won’t let me”, she explained. And the funny thing is, this seems like a totally plausible explanation, rather than a lame excuse. The experience made me wonder: have we really become so accustomed to technology dictating what’s possible that we immediately accept “the computer won’t let me” as an immutable truth?

Considering how many computer systems we interact with on a daily basis, it’s pretty obvious that we can’t possibly exert an influence on all of them. You might be able to request changes to software that your own company wrote. But it’s doubtful that you could get anywhere asking for fixes to products that you only interact with indirectly, such as the pharmacy software in my example. However, that doesn’t mean things can’t be improved. You just need to know the right questions to ask.

So, the next time someone tells you that “the computer won’t let me”, start by asking them how often the problem comes up. If it’s rare, ask them to propose an alternate solution that has worked for other customers. If the problem is common, inquire whether it reduces that person’s productivity or acts as a barrier to more sales. And if you can confirm that, ask the person to tell their manager exactly what they told you. With enough repetition and persistence, the business impact of those pesky computer problems will be clear, and decision makers will be more likely to invest the money to fix the underlying issues.

Although I stop in there periodically to grab a few things, I rarely walk all the aisles of the small and overpriced grocery store near me. But when I was there a few weeks ago, I noticed they had knocked down a wall and built a shiny new extension to the refrigerated foods section. To my surprise, they did a great job with the new coolers, floors and lighting, which makes the area quite a bit more inviting.

However, aside from a few arrows pointing to where some items could be found, there was no signage telling customers about the renovations. Maybe they finished them the day before I was there, or perhaps it’s been like that for six months. The point is that you need to keep customers informed about these things. Sure, regular shoppers will notice the improvements, but what about everyone else?

Ideally, the store should put up signage when they start any renovations, with this signage placed inside the facility and on the outside windows that are visible to passers-by. The initial signs would include a rendering of the work to be done along with some informative text, e.g. “Coming Soon: Our New Refrigerated Foods Section”. Then, when the work is completed, change the text to say “Now Open”, and swap out the image for an actual photo of the new area. By keeping customers in the loop, they’ll be more excited about what’s going on, less critical of any temporary interruptions, and more likely to shop there in the future.

Looking at some of the products around my apartment, it’s amazing to see all the different ways that expiration dates are shown. For instance:

– Black text printed on the top of a dark green plastic lid

– Gray text printed on a yellow package, below a bunch of sales-oriented messaging

– Text embossed onto the end of a box, with no contrasting color

Without any consistency in how and where the expiration date appears, consumers have to hunt and squint to find the relevant info. Aside from being an annoyance, this reduces the likelihood that store employees and shoppers will notice that a product is nearing or past the expiration date.

How can product manufacturers resolve this? For starters, ensure that expiration dates are printed in a high visibility location on the package, with a high contrast color scheme. Even better, one of the big consumer products companies could set out to create a labeling standard for expiration dates. Since every food package contains the FDA Nutrition Facts label, that’s a great place to start. In other words, a manufacturer could print the expiration date above or below the nutrition facts on each of their products.

A labeling standard for expiration dates? Isn’t that wishful thinking? Perhaps. But if even a single big product manufacturer decided to give it a try, I bet the others would quickly adopt the same approach.

Without getting into any specifics, I was involved in a scenario recently where a service provider gave me an estimate before performing a fairly common service. On the written estimate, they wrote the word “guesstimate”, though we both agreed that the final cost should be fairly close to it. But when the actual bill came, it was more than 50% higher.

When I complained about the huge disparity, the service provider acted like I was the one who screwed up. After all, they insisted, the original quote was “only a guesstimate”. In their view, it was my fault for relying on their calculations in the first place. We finally settled on a price somewhere in between the two numbers, but it’s safe to say that neither of us was happy with the outcome.

What’s the moral of this story? No matter what you call an estimate, customers are going to use that as a mental anchor for everything that comes afterwards. If the actual cost is lower, they’ll be happy. But if it’s higher, they’ll be pissed off. So when in doubt, it pays to make your estimates as generous as possible. Err on the high side, and then add another 10-15% for good measure. That way, customers will always be pleasantly surprised at the final bill, and you’ll have a much easier time getting paid.

When I receive an unsolicited email or phone call from a vendor, it’s usually quite easy to see who has done their homework. Perhaps more accurately, the lazy, mail merge types tend to show their colors within the first few lines of an email, or the first 15 seconds of a phone call. Whether it’s spelling our company name wrong or badly mispronouncing my own name, these messages get deleted in seconds.

However, let’s say you’re a legitimate operation and you’re trying to reach new prospects via cold calling. Which approaches should you use to make a good first impression? Here’s a few that come to mind:

– If you’re sending an email, be sure to write their company name and personal name the same way they do. Pay attention to spelling, capitalization and spaces between words.

– If you’re placing a phone call, make an honest effort to pronounce their company name and personal name correctly. If you don’t know how to say it, ask a friend or colleague for help.

Of course, this is a lot of work compared to blindly sending out spam. But it’s also way more likely to get you past the initial few seconds of screening, thus increasing the chance that the recipient will take a moment to read or listen to what you have to say.

A few days ago, one of the vendors we use posted a rather curious statement to their blog. They said that their network provider would be performing “emergency maintenance” later that week, and service might be affected for a brief period. This strikes me as a bit odd: if you’re telling customers about the situation several days in advance, why describe it as an “emergency”?

Granted, it’s always ideal to give people as much notice as possible prior to any scheduled maintenance or other service interruption. But don’t get overly dramatic about it. As a rule, if you can tell your customers about a maintenance window at least 24-48 hours before it impacts them, you should probably avoid terms like “emergency” or “critical” or “last minute”.

While you may choose to apologize for not providing more lead time, it’s best to reserve the “emergency” status for issues that arise without any advance warning. Otherwise, customers will interpret the regular “emergencies” as a sign that you’re disorganized and unprepared — even when you’re doing a superb job of keeping them up to date on the issues that impact them.

When you eat at a sit-down restaurant, it’s common knowledge that you should tip the server. Sure, some restaurants print a suggested tip amount on the receipt, though I believe this is mainly to encourage larger tips or make the calculations easier. But what about other businesses where the protocol for tipping isn’t established yet, or people aren’t familiar with it?

Take grocery delivery, for instance. Peapod makes it very clear that tips are optional. But by simply mentioning tips in the first place — and making it easy to add a tip with a credit card — I bet they convince at least half of their customers to tip the delivery person. This doesn’t address the question of how much, though. One person might tip a dollar or two, while another might use 10-15% of the order value.

The best approach would be to give customers the relevant info about tipping, without being too pushy. For instance, the order confirmation email might say something like this: “Tipping your delivery person is optional. When our customers choose to leave a tip, they typically calculate it based on 5-10% of the order amount. If you don’t feel comfortable leaving a tip, you can still help out our staff by telling your friends and colleagues how much you’ve enjoyed our service.” By providing some parameters for suggested tip amounts and an alternative, non-monetary action, you’ll make all of your customers feel at ease. At the same time, you’ll be promoting larger tips and encouraging word of mouth marketing that helps grow the business as a whole.

The other day, I got a flyer in the mail from Peapod. Being an online grocery delivery service, their messaging focused on saving time and hassle compared to shopping in regular stores. But one aspect of the flyer caught my attention: Peapod emphasizes that their produce is “untouched by other shoppers”.

To me, this sounds like a subtle appeal to customers who are very concerned with cleanliness and avoiding germs. This group hates the idea that dozens of different people may have pawed over every fruit and vegetable before it reaches their own shopping cart. For them, any mention of a way to avoid germs is enough to make them take notice.

But why stop there? I’d love to see a whole campaign focused on why online grocery shopping is cleaner and more hygienic than buying stuff in a traditional store. People spend a lot of money on hand sanitizer and other germ-fighting products. If Peapod targeted a whole campaign to this customer segment, I bet a lot of customers would take a newfound interest in online grocery shopping.

I’ve been researching the options for donating extra office furniture, since our main office has some older desks and partitions that we’re not using. (It turns out that employees prefer the newer, nicer stuff, and I don’t blame them.) Anyways, one of the first options that came to mind was Goodwill. I looked up the local chapter, but quickly learned that Goodwill isn’t a suitable option.

According to their website, Goodwill no longer picks up furniture donations — at least not the South Florida chapter that would serve our office down there. They were a little vague about the reasons for the change, but they probably include factors like these:

– High cost of gas and auto insurance
– Low quality of donated items
– Labor cost of drivers and staff to schedule the appointments

Even with the theories above, it’s rather surprising that Goodwill can’t make the business model work. I mean, they essentially get the goods for free, aside from the cost of picking the items up, and then resell them in their stores. But from the perspective of would-be contributors — the folks like us who have items to give away — the loss of Goodwill’s pickup service is a real downer.

Is there a way to fix this situation? Sure. Reinstate the pickup service, but add a charge for it. The charge needs to be reasonable — say $20 for the first couple of large items and $5 for each large item after that. Then, purchase some software to let people schedule their pickups online. By taking these steps, Goodwill could turn a money-losing service into a profit center — while saving a lot of older yet decent-quality furniture from the local dump.