I asked a friend to recommend a consultant for a specific project, and he gave me four names. One of them sounded really familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where I knew the person from. Several hours later, I realized that the consultant had the same first and last name as a well-known industry figure from the late 1990s.

Since their last names were spelled differently, I knew I wasn’t dealing with the same person I remembered. This made sense, since the first individual has probably retired by now. But I have to wonder: does the new guy derive any benefit from having the same name as another well-known person in the business? In other words, is there goodwill to be gained by stumbling into a marketplace where people already “know” your name? I certainly think so, even if the transaction shortchanges the original person who blazed the trail before you.

Most restaurants don’t put much thought into how the check is presented. Sometimes they’ll include a survey or a coupon for a future visit, but just as frequently, this opportunity to convey valuable messages is squandered. So, I was pretty surprised to see a very clever ad included along with my check at a local restaurant.

The ad was designed to promote loft apartments in the area, but with a few twists. First, the copy addressed the reader by talking about the meal they just enjoyed at the restaurant, clearly showing it wasn’t a generic, one-size-fits-all insert. Second, it emphasized that the lofts were located really close to the restaurant, and offered a $20 gift certificate for stopping by that day. Together, these elements took the seemingly unrelated events of dining at a restaurant and shopping for a new home, and brought them together by using the restaurant’s location as the shared context.

There’s probably no reason to believe that people who dine at this restaurant are qualified to afford a home at the advertised development. However, there’s a pretty good chance that some of them know about the surrounding area, and some subset of those people would like to live there. By making it clear that the lofts are close to the restaurant and providing an incentive to visit the sales office, the advertiser has given prospects a clear way to indicate their interest. In the process, they avoid blasting their message across a wider and less-targeted area, reducing customer acquisition costs as well.

Here’s a few phrases to avoid when talking to customers on the phone:

– “The system won’t allow it” (repeated emphatically using the exact same inflection each time)
– “You only have one more chance” (implying that something terrible is going to happen afterwards)
– “My name is John” (when it’s obviously more like Sidhur or Pravaneek or Nayarameth)

All of these are courtesy of Yahoo’s inept customer service staff, who took nearly half an hour on the phone just to reset a lost password and insulted me every step of the way. Apparently, you can’t reset your password online unless you remember arbitrary data that you entered when first creating the account. Getting a new password sent via email is a multi-step process that requires calling them on the phone and dealing with some of the rudest people I’ve ever spoken to.

The best part of all this? I only needed the password so I could log in and provide an updated credit card for one of Yahoo’s paid services. I can sort of understand crappy customer support for free things, but using this approach for a paid service is bound to drive customers away.

I visited a building yesterday that used a pretty stupid sign-in process. The security person in the front insisted that I write my name and where I was going on their sign-in sheet, although he didn’t ask for any identification to verify my identity. Meanwhile, other people just walked by without even being asked to sign-in. Maybe they worked there and had security badges, I thought. But closer inspection in the elevator showed no such credentials.

Simply put, the building has a sporadically enforced sign-in policy that makes the unlucky victims like me feel unfairly singled out. Plus, they’re getting incomplete data at best, since few people sign in and those that do can easily use a fake name. To remedy all of these issues, I would recommend they get rid of the whole system of asking for your name and where you’re going at the front desk. Instead, they should just put up a sheet in the elevator that shows each business and suite number, along with boxes for each time of day. The simple instructions would ask you to put a mark in the corresponding box after you press the floor you’re going to, and nothing more.

Granted, the data still wouldn’t be perfect. But since this approach is so easy for customers, I think it would provide a lot more info on the relative traffic to each suite compared to harassing a limited subset of people at the front desk. Customers would find it much less intrusive as well, improving their overall satisfaction with the business they’re visiting.

When I decide to purchase a product from my grocery store’s weekly flyer, I naturally look for something that matches the picture they used in the ad. Usually, this works out well, but sometimes they use an old or mismatched photo that actually throws me off course. In other words, I end up looking for branding and color schemes that are nowhere to be found. This makes me wonder: how much can the actual product differ from the one shown in the ad before it starts to cause problems for shoppers? As this gap widens, you eventually reach a point where no picture, or a generic one, is better at leading customers to the advertised product than a photo that doesn’t match the real thing.

It’s a fairly common practice for companies to provide a window of time when a service will be performed. This practice can be applied to a diverse set of tasks, whether it’s repairing an air conditioner or performing scheduled maintenance on a website. In each case, the goal is to tell customers how long the service will take so they can plan accordingly.

But sometimes this concept gets taken too far. For instance, a company might provide an eight hour maintenance window for a service that should only require one hour, to cover the rare case where their staff gets delayed. While the window would technically be accurate, it makes the customer view the company as disorganized and poorly managed, since they can’t even pare things down to a reasonable timeframe. Worse, customers who are unfamiliar with the work to be performed might think that it’s really complex, and they get anxious about living without the product or service for the whole day.

In these cases, the best approach is to provide a reasonable window that captures 95% of cases. Then, make sure there is a process in place to notify customers if things are running behind schedule. That way, people don’t have to waste their whole day waiting around — or get needlessly worried — when there’s a really good chance the technician will show up in a much smaller and more logical window.

While traveling on Chicago’s Metra train system this past weekend, I was rather baffled by the signage at several stations. I expected to see a simple sign on each side of the tracks that said “Wait here for trains to Chicago” (or whatever the destination was). Instead, the signs were either missing entirely or identified the source of the train, rather than its destination. What good is knowing that a train is coming from a certain location if you can’t tell where it’s going?

The logic of Metra’s current approach escapes me. If they want to improve things, they just need a single sign on each side of the tracks. The sign should have big text that says “Wait here for trains to City A”. Then, in smaller print below that, it should say something like “If you’re traveling to City B, go to the other side of the tracks.” That way, customers can easily figure out where to wait for each train, and there’s a safety net for those who accidentally end up in the wrong area of the station.

Ever see a fish bowl in a restaurant encouraging you to drop in your business card for the chance to “win” a free lunch? I attended one of those events once, and it was basically a sales pitch for investment services. Since it’s really a sales presentation, I wonder what would happen if someone just called them up and asked for the free lunch event, even though they hadn’t “won” it. I’m guessing the seller would be happy to oblige, since the contest angle is only there to create the appearance of scarcity where none actually exists.

As far as I know, it’s impossible to remove the default bookmarks that come with the BlackBerry web browser. There they are, taking up valuable screen real estate whenever you open the bookmarks screen — even if you have absolutely no interest in them. Maybe this is a carrier-specific decision and not the fault of the BlackBerry software, but it’s lame either way.

The whole “we know what’s best for you” attitude reminds me of assigned seating in grade school. And I think everyone remembers how well that worked out. I’m not advocating that you give users control over every possible option, but some degree of freedom and flexibility is a must. As a rule of thumb, if you let people add something to a list (like a new bookmark), they should be able to remove the item too. And when this level of customization is allowed, the same rules apply to the initial settings or defaults that the product starts with.