Chicago attracts a lot of tourists. Most of them bring cameras. If I could give them one tip, it would go something like this: don’t stop on a busy sidewalk, bridge or walkway to take a carefully composed picture. In fact, don’t stop in walking areas at all. Turning yourself into a human roadblock is rude, inconsiderate, and just plain stupid. A lot of the people behind you will just keep walking, and I’m sure you don’t want your precious camera ending up on the sidewalk. So do everyone a favor, and move to a low-traffic area when you’re taking pictures. There are plenty of these areas all over town, but the Michigan Avenue bridge isn’t one of them — especially when it’s crammed with people due to construction on the other side.

I got a letter in the mail from Chase the other day, and it really surprised me. The letter said that I hadn’t used my credit card in a few years, so they had cancelled the account. Now, I know that a lot of card issuers are cutting back on credit lines and terminating dormant accounts. But what pisses me off is that Chase did so without any prior warning.

All they had to do was send me a letter or email saying something like this: “You haven’t used your card in a while, so please make at least one purchase in the next 60 days, or we’ll be forced to cancel it.” Simple, direct and actionable. For people like me, who had the account open for a long time but rarely used it, this would have been an impetus to use the Chase card more often. After all, keeping accounts open for a long time is good for your credit score. But as it stands, Chase gave no prior notice, and turned a neutral customer into someone who will probably never sign up for their products and services again.

I got a very thick envelope in the mail from the AAA (the auto club people). Inside was an elaborate direct mail letter explaining that “customers like me” enjoy their AAA membership and get a lot of value from it. The trouble is, nobody in my household has had a car for years. So much for their so-called customer research: it’s obvious the AAA is just spamming everyone in my zip code. I wonder how many other direct mail campaigns are blindly being sent to random lists of people instead of the targeted lists they were designed for — and how much this costs the marketers who were expecting better-than-average response rates.

If you’ve worked in any sort of customer-facing role within an organization, you’re probably familiar with the saying “underpromise and overdeliver”. In other words, set very modest expectations upfront so that you can consistently exceed those expectations in the end.

One of the easiest ways to implement this approach revolves around delivery dates. For example, if most deliveries take 3-5 days, you might tell customers to expect the product in seven days. Virtually every order will arrive ahead of the stated schedule, creating a pleasant surprise for the buyer.

All of this is common knowledge, but I wanted to touch upon a nuance that people often forget. When dealing with dates, terms like “by” or “on” can be ambiguous. Does “you’ll have the proposal by Friday” mean they’ll get it by first thing Friday morning? Or maybe it refers to close of business Friday? And in which time zone? Clearly, this can get confusing quickly. So as a rule, be sure to fulfill your promises before the start of the date you provide. That way, no matter what assumptions your customers may make about the exact delivery time, you’ll be in the clear.

The other day, I got a confirmation email from “nobody”. How is that even possible? Well, someone must have configured their auto-responder to show the name “nobody” in the From field. That’s really quite sloppy. When configuring default settings for email systems, it’s much smarter to enter your company name as the default value. Otherwise, you may be giving customers the message that you don’t really exist.

One of my favorite restaurants, Yolk, is opening a new location a little bit closer to my apartment. However, you’d never know it from their website, which hasn’t been updated in months. In fact, I only heard about the news from a local dining website.

When you’re expanding to a new location, it makes sense to promote it within your existing locations, on your website, etc. In particular, you should be asking people for their email address in exchange for a coupon good for $5 or $10 off at the new location during the first weekend. Then, when it’s getting ready to open, you can email all those people with the particulars, and end up with a huge and loyal following right from the get-go.

If a public transit authority is even half-decent, they’ll post any upcoming service advisories on their website. Typically, this includes construction projects that will result in closings or slowdowns on certain routes, inclement weather notices, etc. However, they rarely seem to consider the impact of special events along their routes.

For instance, if there’s a major sporting event or a holiday parade, it can easily create huge bottlenecks that riders would want to know about. This is especially true for those riders who aren’t attending the event, and would probably prefer to avoid the craziness. By adding these external events to the list of service advisories, public transit authorities would make life easier for a lot of passengers, while reducing the strain on buses, trains, and other resources during peak times.

I once read that a little bit of messiness tends to increase retail sales. In other words, if people see that stacks of books, sweaters, or any other product are perfectly neat and orderly, they’re afraid to mess with them — meaning that they browse less and buy less. But if those same displays are left more naturally, so they aren’t quite perfect, people will engage with them more and purchase more products.

This makes me wonder: can the same logic be applied to small restaurants and coffee shops? Does it make sense to leave tables and chairs a bit out of place after customers use them, rather than rush to make the dining area perfect? I’m not talking about hygiene: obviously, you want the tables to be clean and sanitary. But I’m very curious if more customers would walk in the door if the seating areas are left in their natural, somewhat random state, rather than rushing to keep everything in perfect order.

I read a few webcomics on a regular basis. Recently, I noticed that many of these webcomics provide a prominent notice about how often they’re updated, e.g. “New comics every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday”. However, you rarely see the same sort of update information on text-based blogs.

Perhaps this reflects differences in visitor behavior: comic readers may like to bookmark the page and return a few times a week, while blog readers may prefer RSS or email subscriptions instead of going to the website itself. Either way, it’s an interesting contrast, and makes me wonder if the comic guys are on to something. Maybe all online publications should provide more info about when they’re typically updated, and then see if that leads to more repeat visitors.

My dentist takes punctuality very seriously. In fact, if you’re late more than a few times, they threaten to make you pay a fee for missing the scheduled appointment. Luckily, I’ve never run into this problem myself, but I can clearly see how the policy helps the office run more efficiently — which benefits the staff and patients alike.

When you think about it, collecting the extra fees really isn’t the point. Instead, the goal is to send a message to the sort of customers who always show up late or can’t keep an appointment. And that message is simple: this isn’t the right place for you, since sticking to your current behavior is going to hurt your ego and your wallet.

Does it work? The office certainly runs efficiently: even a 20 minute wait is unheard of. But more importantly, I’ve seen reviews where other patients praise the on-time policies. By penalizing the bad customers, the office has managed to make the good customers even happier. This leads to more word of mouth, and probably helps bring in even more of the customers they want: those who understand and respect the value of being on-time to their appointments.