Suppose I just bought a new microwave. In fact, it’s the first microwave I’ve ever owned. I’ve baked a few things in the oven before, and seen microwaves at other people’s houses. I really want to cook a full meal with my new gadget, but I don’t know where to start. I look for a tech support number on the baking supplies and vegetables, but there’s nothing to be found. So, I decide to call the microwave company, since the number is right on the user’s guide.

Once I get them on the line, I explain my predicament. They kindly state that they don’t provide tech support for basic operations like this. Perhaps I could ask a friend or family member, or look online for help. But I don’t like this answer: they sold me this crazy thing, and they ought to walk me through the whole process, including preparing the food, finding suitable containers, cooking it, and storing the leftovers. I feel lost and abandoned.

Does this sound ridiculous to you? Of course it does. But the funny thing is, people do this every single day with technology products. I’ve been on both sides of this equation, playing the role of the struggling customer and of the tech support agent on the other end of the line. I don’t pretend to have an instant solution, either. Vendors and customers both need to understand the boundaries of what they’re responsible for when somebody is learning a new product. Training options for novice users help a lot, too. But the next time you call tech support, or answer a customer’s query, think about the scenario above. Hopefully it will help you figure out where to draw the line.

A few days ago, I called the phone company to report a billing error. After making my way through a fairly simple menu system, I got to the billing department. What I heard next was quite surprising. Even though I called during business hours, they said there were too many calls in the queue, and told me to call back later. I couldn’t even choose to hold or leave a message. The automated system hung up, and that was that.

Apparently, if there’s more than a certain number of people waiting, or the estimated hold time is over a certain length, the system just tells everyone to call back later. In my case, I waited about a minute, called a different number, and got through just fine. But I still felt insulted by the initial response. Would I have left a message or stayed on hold for more than say five minutes? Probably not. But something about the finality of the response bothered me. Plus, telling people to call back when the call volume is already high just makes the problem worse.

I’m well aware that running a high-volume call center is a complex undertaking, with all sorts of queue management and IVR design issues to consider. But in cases where you really can’t take any more customers into the queue, try to give them options so their call wasn’t a total waste. My recommendation? Rather than the usual choices to leave a voice message or hold for a very long time, it would be nice to just enter your phone number for a callback. Then the system would give you a confirmation number and a time window when they’ll be in touch. With this approach, the customer never wastes their time on a dead-end call, and the call center can politely defer some of the calls until after the peak volume has subsided.

It’s no secret that airplanes, hotels, and other places you go while traveling are filled with germs. But while almost everyone knows about this, few companies in the travel and hospitality business ever mention cleanliness in their marketing — even if they’re taking steps to provide a clean and safe environment. I think they are missing a big opportunity here. In particular, a company that positioned itself as the hotel (or airline, or rental car company) that cares about your health should stand to gain increased market share.

Making this happen should be quite easy. Let’s use hotels as an example. First, you should tell customers what steps you already take to protect their health. Does your cleaning staff wipe down the bathroom surfaces with anti-bacterial cleaner before each new guest arrives? Then say so with a little placard in each room, or via appropriate messaging on your website and in your ads. Second, give customers the tools they need to protect their own health. I’m thinking a bottle of hand sanitizer in the bathroom or elsewhere in the guest room, co-branded with the hotel’s name.

On the balance, these efforts shouldn’t cost very much. And for at least some group of consumers, they should improve the perception of the brand by a significant margin, leading to more hotel stays, airline trips, and cars rented. Plus, there are PR benefits: you could spin this quite nicely during peak travel periods, at the start of flu season, during national health week (if such a thing exists), etc. What’s more, I’ll bet the hospitality companies could get the necessary products at a huge discount by partnering with the manufacturers to offer in-room coupons for these items.

In fact, I think a corporate sponsorship by Lysol is how their products ended up being used in highway rest stops. Somebody has obviously thought about this before, so now it’s just a matter of getting the hospitality and travel firms to give it a try. And as I think about it, the list goes on: restaurants, retailers, and other venues could build their brand and promote repeat visits by showing they care about the health of their customers. Seems like a smart investment to me.

Sometimes, even the most innocent-sounding statements can speak volumes about the person or organization that you’re dealing with. In my experience, this is especially true when people try to address your concerns about a possible transaction. Say you’ve just told a vendor the three things that worry you most about a particular purchase. But instead of addressing each concern with testimonials from other customers or a concrete plan about how they’ll prevent problems, the vendor says you’re worrying too much. “Don’t worry,” they say, “Just trust me.” More often than not, these are the people who screw you over.

It’s the buyer’s job to express their concerns about a transaction in clear and concrete terms. But it’s the responsibility of the vendor to take these concerns seriously. Instead of being a condescending jerk and treating your customer like a whining child, show them some respect. Discuss each concern in detail and show them how your prior experience or your business processes will make sure that things go smoothly. This is true in product-oriented businesses and online services too, even if the delivery of these assurances comes in the form of a FAQ or a money-back guarantee.

So, if you’re evaluating a vendor and they come back with the sort of generic, nebulous statements I mentioned above, keep looking. These people don’t deserve even a dollar’s worth of your business.

I’ve had my share of long and painful flight delays, but I’ve rarely had to spend the night in the airport or a questionable hotel. That said, I’m always aware that it could happen at any time. While pondering how prepared I am for this sort of thing, I thought of a simple question: How difficult would be to procure the most common overnight supplies in a typical airport?

In many terminals, you get at least a convenience store’s worth of selection for stuff like toothpaste and soap. But it’s all sold separately. So why not put all the items together into an overnight stay kit, complete with personal care items, change of clothes, etc.? I’ve seen this type of thing in travel stores like Flight 001, but I don’t know if any stores in airport terminals sell such an assortment. Given all the other things you have to deal with when a flight is cancelled, knowing that you can go pick up a single box with everything you need would provide some peace of mind.

This also ties in nicely with the airlines’ customer service strategies. When flights are severely delayed or cancelled, some airlines issue their passengers a voucher for a hotel room, food, taxi, etc. These programs could be expanded to include the overnight stay kit, which the passenger can pick up on the way out of the airport. Or, the airline itself could keep a supply of these and just give them out. For those carriers that don’t offer anything like that, at least people could buy them conveniently in the terminal.

In any event, buying a single box with the standard overnight supplies is a lot easier than packing all of the items with you, assuming you weren’t planning to spend the night anyway. And it’s much faster than trying to buy all the goods after you learn that you’ll be stuck somewhere for the night. As the product evolves, I could see separate versions for men, women, and children, or even versions that are branded with a corporate sponsor to subsidize the cost. Insurance companies and financial services firms are always trying to position themselves as being there when you need them, so sponsoring this product might be a great fit.

Everyone says you should change your passwords regularly. Some software programs even require you to do it every 30-90 days, and won’t let you use the same password twice. But what about all the websites you use, with their endless list of username and password combinations?

Keeping track of this information can be a project, and I bet that a lot of people never change their passwords for online services. After all, they’re saved by the browser, so why mess with it? While thinking about the implications of saved passwords, it hit me: Why not have the browser itself remind you to change them periodically, and help automate the process?

Perhaps there’s already a Firefox plugin to do this. Even so, building it right into the browser would be quite valuable. In the existing screens that control your password options, you could check a box for “Remind me to change my passwords regularly,” and then choose how often, e.g. “Every 30 days.” Now here’s where the magic comes in: Instead of just showing a message when the right time comes around, the browser would give you an option to pre-fill your old password when you get to the screen. This would remove one of the big obstacles to changing passwords: remembering the password you’re trying to change.

The same system could probably be used for other bits of housekeeping, e.g. “Show me all my passwords that might be too easy to guess” (based on some measure of password strength). In any event, since the browser is the preferred way of saving passwords for a lot of users, adding this sort of functionality would save people time, while making it much easier to keep your online accounts safe.