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If a City Wants My Money, Why Is It So Hard to Give It to Them?

I was thinking recently about one of the strangest contradictions in local government.

Cities collect money from residents and businesses all day long. Water bills, permit fees, business licenses, parking tickets, code violations, recreation fees, inspection fees and probably another dozen things I’m forgetting.

You would think that with all that money changing hands, cities would have become unbelievably good at accepting it.

Yet somehow paying a city can still feel like you’re trying to complete a financial transaction in 1987.

Depending on where you live and what you’re paying, you might need to mail a check, obtain a certified check, find a particular office inside City Hall or physically show up during business hours. Maybe you have to park in a garage, walk several blocks or, my personal favorite, actually pay for parking so you can go inside a government building and pay the government more money.

Then you get to the counter and sometimes encounter someone who acts as though your arrival has ruined an otherwise perfectly good afternoon.

Why?

You’re there to give them money.

If there were ever a moment in the relationship between a city and its residents that should be incredibly easy, this would seem to be it.

Businesses Learned This a Long Time Ago

Think about how much effort private companies put into removing friction from the moment of payment.

Amazon remembers your credit card. Restaurants bring handheld terminals to the table. Apple lets you buy something by double-clicking a button on your phone. Uber made paying for a ride almost invisible. You get out of the car and walk away.

There’s a reason companies obsess over this stuff. Every unnecessary step is another opportunity for someone to become frustrated, abandon the transaction or think differently about the business.

Government doesn’t have quite the same problem. You can’t exactly abandon your water bill because the checkout experience was annoying and switch to another water provider.

And maybe that’s precisely why the experience hasn’t received enough attention.

A business has to make things easy because you can leave. A city knows you can’t.

That’s not a particularly good reason to provide a worse experience. If anything, I think it creates an even greater responsibility to provide a good one.

Paying Is Part of the City’s Brand

When cities talk about branding, the conversation usually involves logos, colors, slogans, websites, welcome signs and tourism campaigns.

I think that’s an incredibly narrow definition of a brand.

Ask someone how they feel about their city and I doubt their answer has much to do with the logo.

Their opinion was built through hundreds of little experiences.

They called about a pothole and somebody actually answered. They pulled a permit and it took three weeks longer than promised. They signed their child up for summer camp. They attended an event in the park. They disputed a parking ticket. They called the water department. They tried to open a business. They walked into City Hall and asked a question.

Those interactions are the brand.

And paying the city is one of those interactions.

Imagine spending $100,000 on a new municipal identity promising that your community is innovative, welcoming and business-friendly, then telling a business owner they need to bring a certified check to a particular office between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Which message do you think they’re going to remember?

The City Can’t Always Make the Bill Pleasant. It Can Make Paying It Pleasant.

There is an important distinction here.

Nobody enjoys getting a parking ticket.

Nobody gets excited about paying a permit fee.

A water bill isn’t going to become the highlight of someone’s day because the payment portal has attractive typography.

The city doesn’t control the emotional baggage that comes with every transaction.

It absolutely controls what happens next.

If someone owes $150, let them pay the $150 in 30 seconds from their phone.

Let them use Apple Pay or Google Pay. Let them securely save a payment method. Let them scan a QR code on the notice. Let them receive an immediate confirmation that clearly says what they paid and what happens next.

Don’t make them create an account with a password containing three capital letters, two Egyptian hieroglyphics and the name of their first-grade teacher just to give you money.

And if someone genuinely needs to visit City Hall, that experience shouldn’t feel like punishment either.

Parking should be obvious. Directions should be clear. The person behind the counter should understand that they aren’t simply processing a transaction. For a few minutes, they are the entire city government to the person standing in front of them.

That matters.

Even the Receipt Is an Opportunity

This is where my marketing brain starts wondering why cities waste so many little opportunities.

Imagine someone just paid their annual business license fee.

The typical confirmation might say something like:

PAYMENT RECEIVED
TRANSACTION #3847291
AMOUNT: $247.00

Perfectly functional.

But why couldn’t it also say:

“Thank you for doing business in our community.”

Or after someone pays a recreation fee:

“We’ll see you at the park!”

Maybe a longtime resident paying a water bill gets a simple thank you for being part of the community.

Nothing cheesy. Nothing that feels like propaganda. Just a little humanity.

Companies spend fortunes trying to create these tiny moments because they understand that experiences accumulate.

Cities already have the moments. They just don’t do much with them.

There Is Also a Compliance Argument

Making payment easier isn’t simply about being nice.

It should help the city accomplish what it wanted in the first place: getting paid.

If a bill can be paid immediately from a phone, some people will pay it immediately.

If paying requires finding the checkbook, buying a stamp and remembering to put an envelope in the mail tomorrow, you have introduced several opportunities for procrastination.

The same is true of a complicated online portal. Every login, form field and confusing instruction creates friction.

I’ve always found it strange when organizations complain about late payments while maintaining payment systems that seem almost designed to produce them.

Before sending another reminder notice, maybe try making the original bill ridiculously easy to pay.

Business Owners Notice This Stuff

This matters even more when cities say they want to attract entrepreneurs and investment.

Imagine somebody opening their first business in town.

They’ll probably interact with the city multiple times before opening the doors. Zoning questions, permits, inspections, licenses, utilities and fees.

Those aren’t administrative details from the business owner’s perspective. They’re the first experiences that person has doing business with the community.

A city can put “BUSINESS FRIENDLY” across its economic development website in 72-point type.

If opening a business requires four trips to City Hall and three certified checks, the entrepreneur is going to form a different opinion.

You don’t tell someone you’re easy to do business with.

You make doing business with you easy.

I Would Treat Every Payment Like a Customer Experience

If I were evaluating a city’s resident experience, I’d start by making a list of every situation in which someone has to give the city money.

Then I’d actually try each one.

Not from a government computer. From a phone.

How many clicks does it take?

Can I understand what I owe?

Can I pay without creating an unnecessary account?

Are modern payment methods accepted?

Are the fees clearly disclosed?

Do I immediately know the payment went through?

Can I easily find the receipt six months later?

What happens if something goes wrong?

And for transactions that genuinely require an in-person visit, I’d walk through that experience too. I’d park where a resident parks, enter through the same door, wait in the same line and speak to the same counter.

Cities conduct studies on far more complicated things.

This one could probably be accomplished in an afternoon.

Make the Easy Things Easy

Not every problem in local government has a simple solution.

Infrastructure is complicated. Housing is complicated. Public safety is complicated. Economic development is complicated.

Accepting money isn’t.

That’s what makes unnecessary friction around payments so frustrating. This is one of the relatively easy things to improve, and improving it touches an enormous number of residents and businesses.

Maybe the goal should be ridiculously simple: if someone is ready to pay the city, make that moment effortless.

And while you’re at it, make it pleasant.

Because every interaction teaches residents something about the place they live.

Even the receipt.

GRIP.D helps public-sector organizations improve how they communicate with and serve their communities. From branding and website development to digital campaigns and resident-focused communications, we help make public services easier to understand, access and navigate.

Ready to improve your community’s experience? Contact GRIP.D

What a Hotel Bathrobe Can Teach You About Marketing

I don’t think anyone has ever booked a hotel because of the bathrobe. You might care about the location, the view, the pool, the restaurant, the size of the room or whether they have those horrible resort fees. The robe is probably somewhere around number 147 on the list.

Yet there’s something about getting out of the shower in a nice hotel and putting on that giant white bathrobe that changes the experience. Suddenly you’re walking around the room differently. Maybe you order room service. You sit by the window drinking coffee. For some reason a hotel bathrobe can make an otherwise normal person feel like they own a vineyard and are waiting for their attorney to finish reviewing the paperwork from a very important acquisition.

It’s silly, but that’s exactly why I find it interesting.

The robe doesn’t actually make the hotel room better. It doesn’t improve the mattress. It doesn’t make the room larger or give you a better view. In fact, if the hotel quietly removed the robes before you arrived, there’s a pretty good chance you wouldn’t complain because you probably weren’t expecting to use one in the first place.

But once it’s there, it contributes to the feeling that you’re somewhere a little special.

Hotels are unusually good at this. Think about all the little things that have almost nothing to do with renting a room for the night. The ridiculously heavy lobby doors. The smell when you walk inside. The lighting. The music playing somewhere that you can’t quite locate. The way the towels are folded. The glass your drink comes in at the bar.

Go to a really nice hotel and someone has thought about almost all of it.

Then think about how most companies approach marketing. We spend an incredible amount of time thinking about what we’re going to tell people. What’s the headline? What’s the slogan? What should the website say? What are we going to post on social media?

Those things matter, obviously. I make a living thinking about many of them. But I sometimes wonder whether we’re spending too much time trying to tell customers what kind of company we are and not enough time giving them little reasons to reach that conclusion themselves.

There’s a big difference between a business telling you it’s high-end and experiencing something that feels high-end.

This doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot of money either. I’ve been to expensive restaurants where everything technically looked beautiful but something about the experience felt cold. I’ve also been to inexpensive little places where someone remembers your name, brings you something you didn’t order because they thought you’d like it, or packages something in a way that makes you smile when you open it.

Those things become part of the product even though they’re not technically the product.

Cities do this too, although they don’t usually think of it as marketing. A city can spend money developing a new logo and come up with a slogan about being a great place to live, work and play. Nearly every city seems to be a great place to live, work and play according to its own website.

But imagine arriving in that same city and finding beautiful landscaping, clean streets, interesting public art, comfortable benches, flowers, good lighting and storefronts that look cared for. You don’t need the slogan anymore. You’re already forming an opinion.

The opposite works just as quickly. You can have the greatest branding campaign in the world, but if the first thing someone sees after exiting the highway is weeds, faded signs and an abandoned shopping center, the weeds are probably going to win the branding argument.

That’s why I keep coming back to the bathrobe.

Every business probably has its own version of one. Some small, seemingly unnecessary detail that doesn’t appear in the main sales pitch but changes how the customer interprets everything around it.

Maybe it’s how you answer the phone. Maybe it’s what happens immediately after someone buys. It could be your packaging, your waiting room, the way an employee greets someone, or something so minor nobody in the company has thought about it in years.

I think it would be an interesting exercise for a business to forget about its logo and advertising for an afternoon and walk through the entire customer experience looking for those things.

What’s your bathrobe?

And perhaps more importantly, what’s the equivalent of a cheap scratchy towel that is quietly undoing everything your advertising promised?

Because customers probably aren’t separating all these things as neatly as we do.

To them, it’s all the hotel.

Contact us today at GRIPD.com to get started on your marketing strategy!

What Cruise Ships Reveal About Human Behavior and How We Apply It at GRIP.D

At GRIP.D, we design environments that affect how people experience places, brands, and communities. Our focus is on strategy, behavioral science, and growth. We consistently study how context influences decision-making.

One of the most telling environments for this is not a city center or a digital platform. It is a cruise ship.

When you take the same people who are careful with time, money, and calories on land and put them on a cruise, they become more patient, adventurous, and engaged. They wait with ease, join in eagerly, and spend more freely.

This shift is not by chance. It is the result of careful design.

Cruise ships serve as real-life examples of how an environment can influence behavior. Many of the principles they use are the same ones we integrate into our work at GRIP.D.

The All-Inclusive Effect and Rethinking Perceived Value

A common behavior on a cruise is that guests overindulge in anything seen as already paid for. Buffets are taken advantage of. Beverage packages are fully used. Not because guests lose all restraint, but because their brains switch to value-seeking mode.

This is a classic idea in behavioral economics. Once people spend money, they look to get the most from that investment.

At GRIP.D, we use this principle by creating experiences that provide value upfront. When users believe they have made a meaningful investment, whether in a platform, a community, or a city, they engage more deeply and consistently. This happens not out of obligation, but because participation feels rewarding.

The Patience Paradox and Reframing Friction

A wait time that seems unacceptable in everyday life becomes bearable, even enjoyable, in the right context. On a cruise, delays are seen as part of the experience instead of a nuisance.

The key factor is not time; it is the story being told.

We apply this idea when designing engagement journeys for brands and cities. Instead of trying to eliminate every source of friction, we work to reframe those moments so they feel meaningful rather than frustrating.

When people see the value in the process, they exhibit more patience.

Identity Activation and the Power of Context

Formal night on a cruise provides a simple but powerful insight. When people enter a new setting, they often take on new versions of themselves. The environment encourages them to behave differently, more confidently, expressively, and openly.

We refer to this as identity activation.

At GRIP.D, this principle shapes how we approach placemaking, brand ecosystems, and experience design. We are not just making tools or campaigns; we are creating settings where people feel empowered to present themselves differently and, in doing so, engage more fully.

Designing for Participation, Not Persuasion

Cruise ships don’t rely on motivation alone to encourage engagement. They depend on design.

Activities are in plain sight. Participation feels normal. Barriers to entry are low. The outcome is a high level of involvement without heavy-handed encouragement.

This is behavioral economics in action and guides how we approach community activation, talent attraction, and platform engagement. Our goal is not to persuade people to take part.

Our goal is to make participation the easiest choice.

Why Generosity Builds Loyalty

Cruise environments are purposely generous. Guests are encouraged to enjoy more, try more, and experience more. This generosity becomes the emotional base of loyalty.

We observe the same pattern in the strongest brand ecosystems. When people link an experience with abundance instead of limitations, they create deeper, longer-lasting connections.

At GRIP.D, we keep this in mind while designing. Experiences should feel empowering, not restricting. When people feel valued rather than managed, retention becomes a natural outcome.

The Broader Insight

Cruise ships provide a clear and powerful reminder.

Behavior does not change because people change. Behavior changes because environments change.

This belief is central to our work at GRIP.D.

Whether we are helping cities attract talent, assisting brands in building stronger ecosystems, or enabling organizations to foster more meaningful engagement, we always ask this question.

What kind of behavior does this environment naturally encourage?

When the context is right, the outcomes follow.