I’ve been trying to bring a reusable bag with me when buying groceries or running other errands. Once I got into the habit of doing this, I ran into a secondary challenge: convincing cashiers to put my purchases in the reusable bag. It’s almost like you have to force the bag in front of them to break the normal cycle of using the store’s disposable bags.

As my experience illustrates, more than one set of people may have to abandon their old habits before a new product or way of doing things can reach acceptance. I think we’re often guilty of emphasizing one group without considering who else takes part in the process. In the case of reusable bags, this means focusing too much on the consumer and not enough on the cashier who actually handles the bag during a typical purchase.

I had some family in town for the weekend. On Sunday, we decided to visit a neat little gift shop that sells design and architecture-related products. Once we picked out the items to buy, we went to the checkout area. The cashier started to ring up our purchase, but quickly discovered the cash register was broken. And not just one of them: the store’s entire point-of-sale system was down. We waited patiently, but the manager squashed our hopes by saying that it could be hours before the POS system would be working again.

We asked if there was another way to make the purchase, like having them total the purchase by hand and paying cash. We even said they could keep the change. But no matter what we offered, the store insisted they couldn’t sell us anything until later in the day. The best they could do was hold the items for us, and it was our job to come back when things were working again. Begrudgingly, we accepted this mediocre compromise.

Did we eventually go back and buy the stuff? Well, we tried to, but the POS system went down again just after we arrived. And I’m guessing people who try again are the exception, not the rule. Conservatively, I would say at least 50% of people who are denied a purchase due to technical difficulties never end up returning to complete that purchase. The number might even be as high as 80%. And this trend impacts both real-world and online merchants. When this happens, it’s money left on the table — revenues and profits you can’t ever get back.

What’s the solution? You simply have to provide an alternate purchasing method when the main one is down. Online merchants are great at this — they’ll typically give you a phone number to call when the website’s checkout system isn’t working. But local stores usually just give up when the cash register malfunctions. To remedy this, they could take cash from those who have exact change, or setup a website that staff can reach from the store’s computers to process credit card transactions when the POS is down. In any event, there’s significant money to be gained by ensuring that willing buyers have a way to make a purchase, no matter what goes wrong at the store level.

I cancelled a flight with Northwest Airlines earlier this week. Here’s the actual text that appeared at the top of their confirmation email:

“Something (or nothing) can go here”

Obviously, somebody put in this lame placeholder text and forgot to fix it before the template went live. In most cases, I’d say it’s better to get rid of the placeholder and include a no-nonsense summary in its place, or just leave it out entirely. If you like, you can make a note about improving it later. But don’t leave things in a state of disrepair just because you figure someone will deal with it in a later revision.

Need more guidance on this topic? I usually think about how a customer would react if they saw the “draft” version without the additional polish and refinement that would go into the “final” one. In other words, whatever version I’m saving has to be effective even without the benefit of future revisions. After all, it’s a lot better to have slightly boring yet concise text, compared to an embarrassing placeholder.

Before I went off to college (which seems like eons ago), the school asked everyone to fill out a personality profile to better match up roommates. The questions were pretty standard: do you listen to loud music, are you a morning person, do you smoke, etc. I can’t speak for how effective this actually is, but thinking about it in the context of real-world residential life gave me an interesting idea.

Specifically, why don’t communities or even large residential buildings designate certain streets, floors, etc. for people with similar interests? There could be a whole wing for people with small dogs, or families with boisterous children, or people who like to play an instrument late at night. While administering this would be a challenge, the benefits for residents would be substantial. Each resident could live near other like-minded people, and avoid the pet peeves that they share as well.

Wireless networks, or WiFi, seem to be popping up everywhere these days. Even the smallest mom-and-pop cafes have been putting in wireless routers so their customers can get online. As the logic goes, people who are surfing the web will stay longer and buy more food and beverages. This makes me wonder: why don’t doctor’s offices put in WiFi too? I’m sure this would help appease people when the wait ends up longer than expected. Perhaps some doctors and dentists are already doing it, but it’s certainly not a common tactic.

Yesterday, I purchased a subscription to a web-based service. When the transaction was confirmed, I expected to start using the paid features right away. However, the site informed me that I would have to wait up to a full day before my membership was activated. This was a little disappointing, but since they notified me about it, I figured I’d check back later in the day to see if my account was ready.

Sure enough, I got an order confirmation a few hours later, and I was able to begin using the paid features. By letting me know the timeline for processing new orders, the site helped manage my expectations properly. Since my account was ready before they said it would be, I was pretty pleased. Sure, I would have liked to get it sooner, but I have no complaints with how things were handled.

This experience underscores a simple truth in today’s e-commerce world: if you’re selling a product or service that gets delivered entirely via the web, like a software download or website membership, people expect to get immediate access to it. But even if you can’t fulfill things that quickly, simply telling them what sort of turnaround to expect can work wonders in keeping customers well-informed and satisfied with the experience.

While looking at the website for a new pizza place, I was impressed by the variety of information they provided. The site contained a full menu with prices, their wine list, and even recipes inspired by their food selection. But one obvious thing was missing: pictures of the restaurant itself.

Maybe I’m strange, but I put a lot of value on the atmosphere a restaurant provides. If the interior is uninspiring or they’ve got the tables packed too close together, it often makes more sense to order takeout or just forego the trip entirely. In my case, I eventually found pictures of the pizza place on other websites, including a set of professionally-done shots. With this information in hand, I decided to give the restaurant a try, and it ended up being pretty good.

For these reasons and more, it’s critical for any experience-driven venue — whether it be a restaurant, retail store, museum, etc. — to provide some decent photos that illustrate what it’s like to be there. If you’ve built a website for your venue, adding some pictures of the place is a cheap and easy way to convince more people to try it out.

I’ve often heard the idea that state and federal governments can’t go out of business, since they can always raise taxes until ends meet. If people don’t like it, too bad — they’re stuck with the situation until the next election. However, the same strategy doesn’t work for private businesses. The airlines are a great example. Fuel costs going up? Just raise fares another 20%. Of course, this hurts them in the long run, since there actually is competition for air travel. Southwest seems to be the only airline that understands this simple truth: behaving like the government doesn’t work when people actually have a choice in the matter.

The place I go for a haircut always has a line outside the door on Sunday mornings. The line begins to form about 30 minutes before they open. This may seem like a waste of time, but regular customers know that lining up early helps you avoid the hour-plus waits that are typical later in the day. This makes me wonder: might there be a better way to manage this queue, like charging an extra $5 for a guaranteed spot in the first ten haircuts of the day? This would mean less waiting for the customers who choose to pay the extra fee, and more revenue for the salon. Since the reason for arriving so early is to avoid spending your whole afternoon in the waiting area, I think they would have quite a few takers on this offer.

When I called to make a doctor’s appointment the other day, I was greeted with a long pre-recorded message that contained the office hours and other info that people probably ask them a lot. I can certainly understand the logic in this approach. By answering common questions up front with a recorded message, fewer calls have to be handled by the receptionist — leading to shorter hold times for people who need to make an appointment or perform other tasks. So far, so good.

However, the boilerplate statement that came after the initial message surprised me: “If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911.” Sure, a person would have to be pretty misguided to call a regular doctor when they’re having a life-threatening problem, but it’s still not a good idea to make those people listen to 40 seconds of office information before telling them to call 911. That information should be presented at the very start of the interaction.

Generalizing this a bit, if one part of your phone greeting is vastly more important than the rest, common sense dictates that this information should go first. Even if that part only applies to a small percentage of callers, it’s reasonable to place it at the very beginning. If you’re worried about that initial message scaring off your regular customers, either cut it down or rephrase it until it flows naturally with the rest of your greeting.

While something like an emergency message won’t be relevant to every caller, it can still be used to build confidence in your organization. You want callers to come away thinking that your company is always looking out for them, even if the particular piece of advice you’re offering isn’t relevant to them right now.