Last week, my travels took me through San Francisco and Vancouver. While at the airports in both cities, I was reminded of how poor the bathrooms are in most airports. I’m not talking about cleanliness or peak traffic capacity, although those are often a problem. Rather, I’m referring to the lack of places to put your bag, coat, and other items while using the restroom.

When I’m about to get on a plane, I typically have a bag of some sort, plus a jacket during the winter months. Yet most airport restrooms have just one little hook in the bathroom stall, which is usually too small to even hang a jacket on. When you have more than one item, or the one item falls off the hook, you’re forced to put your stuff on the floor. I’ve learned to do this by necessity, but it’s still pretty gross to lay your possessions on the bathroom floor. Would it really cost that much more to install bigger hooks?

This experience tells me that airport bathrooms aren’t exactly at the top of anyone’s consumer behavior studies. This is probably due to privacy concerns, as nobody wants cameras or live researchers tracking their restroom usage. But that’s no excuse for such obviously poor design. Performing exit surveys with a random sampling of customers would surely provide evidence of the problem. Maybe then we might see some cheap but effective innovations: two or three large hooks for hanging your coat, hat, and bags, or a shelf for storing items that don’t have anything to hang them by.

Surely I’m not alone in wanting these enhancements. But if the airport designers never ask people about their experiences, they might never figure out that such obvious features are missing.

As part of my ongoing flooring saga, I purchased a neat electric broom made by Hoover. It’s too early to tell how well it works, but I was impressed by the easy assembly. Like most people, I put it together first and looked at the instructions later. To my surprise, both the quick start guide and the user’s manual were quite short, only a few pages each. This raises the question: if your user’s guide is very brief, do you really need a separate sheet for initial setup?

Aside from the cost of writing and printing the extra documentation, having both a user’s manual and a quick start guide sends a message to the customer. It’s sort of like saying “This product is so complex that you’ll need the full manual eventually, but here’s a shorter one to get you started.” And for some products, you can’t avoid that. But for many others, you could probably just tighten up the user’s guide, make the first page or two really easy to follow, and ditch the quick setup sheet. In total, I think this creates a better first impression: namely, that the product can be operated without a large time investment on the user’s part.

If you do end up including both documents, it’s best to avoid ridiculous form factors for the quick start guide. You know what I’m talking about: those printer setup sheets that are like 3×5 feet when you unfold them, and never fold back to their original size again. These non-standard sizes just add more stress to the product setup process, since the customer has to deal with an ill-tempered poster just to figure out where the plugs go or how to remove the hidden packing tape inside the access door.

Of course, problems with the quick start guide can be avoided by making the user’s manual short and elegant enough that you don’t need a dedicated setup guide. In my case, the user’s guide that Hoover provided with the vacuum already had an easy-to-follow setup section right at the beginning. The quick start guide was only a little bit more simplified from there. Thus, Hoover could probably get rid of the quick start guide, make a few edits to the user’s manual, and see no decline in customer satisfaction. And I’ll bet people would rate the product as easier-to-use, since there would be fewer documents to contend with as a new user.

1.) You take days to answer basic questions via email.

2.) Your company’s main number goes directly to voice mail for at least two hours a day.

3.) You just told the customer that you made blatant mistakes while delivering or installing the product, without offering them any compensation for your negligence.

I recently purchased a bottle of Method stainless steel cleaner in the hopes of getting my appliances a little shinier. Foolish and naive, I followed the instructions on the bottle. I sprayed the cleaner on a soft cloth, wiped down the appliances, and was greeted with a streaky mess that looked ten times worse than before. I ended up having to use an alcohol-based cleaner just to restore the old, sort-of-clean look that I started with. After a brief web search, I learned that the Method instructions were totally oversimplified, and the real process involves 5-10 steps or more.

Clearly, it’s a good idea to make your documentation short and to the point. But be careful not to lead customers in the wrong direction or set impossible expectations. In other words, if you’re providing instructions that will probably only work in a limited number of cases, then make it clear what people should do if they don’t achieve the expected results. This could be as simple as pointing customers to some third-party resources where they can get more information about how to proceed. Otherwise, people may think the product simply doesn’t work.

In my case, I began by dismissing the Method cleaner as ineffective. It wasn’t until trying other cleaners that I saw how difficult the task was. And a helpful article online clarified that a product like Method is only one step in the process. You need to use alcohol, vinegar, and other things first to get the grime off. With this in mind, I would recommend that Method revise the instructions on the bottle. Sure, they can tell you to start by trying their product by itself. But if that doesn’t work (and for many people, it won’t), the instructions should direct you to a specific website to learn more about the full process for cleaning stainless steel — before you end up returning the product.

I’m getting tired of people making up lame excuses for why they can’t deliver a functional product or service. It seems like it’s always someone else’s fault: the customer failed to read the disclaimer, or the subcontractor forgot the supplies, or UPS dropped the box in shipping. Frankly, it’s all a load of crap. No matter what you do, there’s somebody else dealing with a scenario that’s ten times more difficult, yet somehow delivering much more consistently than you are.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is a great example. CTA gets a lot of bad press, but I would contend that the consistency of their rail service is better than virtually any commercial business I deal with. CTA is saddled with all sorts of funding problems and a history of poor management, their train cars and tracks are decades old, and the environmental conditions can be incredibly harsh. Yet despite all this, the trains are almost always running, even during torrential rain and snow.

I don’t know how CTA manages to be this reliable when there are so many factors stacked against them. Maybe it’s because huge numbers of people count on the trains to be running. On second thought, that can’t be the only factor: many companies with a big customer base let their systems fail regularly — and never seem to fix the core problems. For instance, RIM has a problem with its BlackBerry service every few months, disabling mobile connectivity for millions of corporate and government users. So the sheer size of the customer base can’t be the deciding factor.

In CTA’s case, my best guess is that the front line people — the ones who actually keep the trains running and the tracks free of obstructions — happen to work really hard and care about their customers. This is no easy task, for sure. But if they can keep things going in the worst of circumstances, I think that sends a message to the rest of us. While it may be easy to blame customers or channel partners or external events when you can’t deliver what you promised, the best approach is to just accept responsibility and find a way to keep things running like your customers expect them to.

Like many people, I use web-based services as part of my daily routine. From CRM and project management to live chat and collaboration tools, much of what I do takes place in a hosted environment. Whether you call them Hosted Services, Application Service Providers, or Software as a Service, the general idea is that someone else provides the infrastructure and manages the backend, and you as the customer just login to a website to get things done. Most commonly, you pay a recurring subscription fee for the service, rather than making a large upfront payment.

While thinking about this business model a few days ago, I started to wonder: If software can be sold based on the value it delivers to the user, why can’t physical products be offered this way too? In other words, if a product costs $500 and you typically keep it for three years, might there be a business model where you could pay $30 a month for it during that span, with the ability to return or exchange it prior to three years if you change your mind? Before I continue, let me point out that I’m not talking about traditional financing or leasing, where you shift the payments over time. Rather, I’m proposing a new model where you pay for the product based on the value it delivers, without a penalty for returning it early.

To be clear, I don’t have any problem with vendor financing. It certainly comes in handy in many situations. But I do believe there are some people who look at installment plans as something you use when you really can’t afford the product in the first place. And this might be a very lucrative group to market to. Let me elaborate a bit more on who I’m talking about. I’m thinking about those customers who want your product and can afford to pay cash for it today, but who fail to make a purchase. Why? Because some other purchase was a higher-priority use of those funds, and they don’t want to be locked into a traditional finance or lease arrangement (or simply don’t like the idea of borrowing money to pay for the item). I’m guessing this applies to business purchases, too. In all these cases, you run the risk of losing the customer’s resource allocation decision — which may come after their initial decision that your product is worthwhile.

If you want to maximize your sales to this group, I think a different approach is needed. Rather than just asking them to pay cash or enter into a long-term lease or finance contract, how about something in between? Maybe they pay 10% of the purchase price each year as a “Membership Fee,” and then pay a “Subscription Fee” for each month they keep the product. These charges would include extended warranty coverage and supplies.

Granted, this sounds a lot like renting, but it’s not the same thing. When you rent, you typically get a used product that probably hasn’t been well cared for. In my plan, you would be getting a new (or like new) product and just pay for it as you go along. Also, renting is designed for short periods of time, but this approach would be optimized for multi-year deals. Of course, there are other issues to work out, like making sure prospective subscribers are credit-worthy, and charging enough to cover the support and administrative costs of the program. But I think these concerns can be addressed without introducing too much complexity. And when a product comes back that’s not quite in perfect shape, it could be sold online at a significant discount.

With all that said, I can think of at least one company doing this already: ZipCar. In their case, they charge a recurring membership fee to join the service, and then you pay an hourly or daily rate whenever you use one of their vehicles. I can’t put a finger on why, but it just feels more valuable and substantial to me than renting a car from the usual car rental companies. Maybe it’s the subscription fee that makes you feel like you belong to an elite club, or the fact that you don’t have to wait in line every time you need a vehicle. In any event, I think there is a significant opportunity to sell certain products on a subscription basis, and reap the rewards that come from added sales to the target group that I described above.

A few weeks ago, we decided to look into switching mobile phone providers. We started by contacting one of the large carriers and asking for a quote. In the initial request, we told them how many minutes and data plans we needed, plus the model of phone that would be acceptable. We also included a copy of our current bill for reference. But when they sent us the quote, it was completely wrong. The number of phones, minutes, etc. were all incorrect, and they used a different phone than we asked for.

Maybe this was an honest mistake, we figured. So we spoke to the sales rep, and got two more quotes from him. Each was wrong in some obvious but different way. After several rounds of this, we still didn’t have a valid quote. So we moved on to the next provider, and again sent in a list of what we needed and a copy of the current bill. And they managed to screw up the quote just as badly as the first one. Apparently, neither provider can be bothered with actually looking at what they’re sending prospective clients to see, for example, if the number of phones matches how many the company says they need.

This obviously comes down to a communications failure: the sales reps simply don’t listen to what you’re saying, no matter how clearly you express it. Frankly, I don’t know where they got our quotes from. Maybe they have a random quote generator that plugs in arbitrary numbers for each product you ask about. Surely that’s easier and more efficient than just quoting the customer on the specific items they asked for, right? The really amusing part is this: several times in this mobile phone experience, one of my colleagues said that the phone carriers had misquoted us in the hopes that we wouldn’t notice and would sign up anyway. And I think my colleague is right.

What a great strategy for winning new clients: ignore what they tell you and try to trick them into buying the wrong thing. Maybe the customer will blame the lack of phone service for 70% of their staff on the old carrier, anyway. But for those of us who actually want to acquire and retain customers, here’s a better idea: listen to what prospects say, and make sure that what you’re giving them makes sense.

I tried to get removed from a catalog mailing list yesterday. As usual, I never signed up for the catalog and they added my name (without asking) simply because I had made a prior purchase, but that’s a gripe for another day. At any rate, I was pleased to hear an option right on the phone menu for mailing list removal. However, it insisted on looking me up by phone number (which they didn’t have for me) or taking a recording of my whole address. Five tries and ten minutes later, I was still nowhere. Then I asked for a live representative, and we were done in about 45 seconds. The secret? He asked for the customer code on the catalog itself.

Now, I’m well aware that virtually every catalog has a series of numbers printed near your name to identify you. This might be called a Customer Code, Catalog ID, Referral Code, etc. The point is, at least one of those numbers matches up with your name and address in the retailer’s database. So why is it so damn hard to just provide that number when requesting catalog removal? Surely there is a logical reason for this, since it’s consistent with every list I’ve tried to get removed from. But the rationale still eludes me.

Perhaps they do this on purpose, to make it difficult to opt-out. Maybe they want to encourage people to give up, or increase the chances that you’ll leave them incomplete information that they can’t match up with your records. Either way, it’s just plan wrong. Every company that mails out catalogs should have a clear and straightforward way to get off the list. They should provide a phone number or website that asks for only ONE piece of data: the customer code or another numeric string on the mailing label. Not your name and address, not your phone number, not your SAT score, and not the batting average of some obscure minor league shortstop. You would enter that one piece of data, press a key or click a button to confirm you want to be removed, and you’re done.

But who am I kidding? My wish will never happen, since there’s big money in spam — and that’s what many printed catalogs are. If they were legitimate, it wouldn’t be so damn hard to get off the list.