Aloe Studios

Hello,

My name is Andy Ford and I have been a satisfied Costco member since 2005. I send you this letter in good faith and with the context of “opportunity for improvement”. I was compelled to write this out of surprised disappointment – not anger or bitterness.

Since Costco does not issue new cards upon membership renewal, my card still says “02/2005″.  I hadn’t shopped at Costco in quite a few months and could not remember when I last renewed, so I did not know if my membership was still active.

Unfortunately, I could not locate any documentation regarding my most recent renewal. Admittedly, this lack of good record keeping is my fault (but the situation would still be the same if one had kept good records, but was not able to physically retrieve them – ie. out of town). I was left with no idea of whether or not I was still an active Costco member.

So I created an account on costco.com and entered my personal information including my Costco membership number (xxxxxxxxxxxx). I reasoned that now costco.com would surely be able to inform me if my membership status was current or expired. After all, the site now had my personal information and my membership number.

To my surprise, I could not find my membership status in the “my account” page or anywhere on costco.com. I double checked that I was indeed still logged in. Yes, I was still logged in. I spent at least 15 minutes looking over the FAQ page and clicking on what I thought were pages that might lead me to my membership status info. Then – out of desperation – I began clicking on pages that I really didn’t think would have my membership status, but I tried them anyway.

I finally gave up searching costo.com for my membership status and called the 800 number listed on the site (800-774-2678). After waiting at least 5 minutes to speak to a representative, I was greeted by a very pleasant and helpful woman (who’s name I regret I cannot remember. the call was at 10:11am PST and lasted ~11 minutes including hold time).

I explained my situation to her and she mentioned that the Costco mainframes don’t talk to the website. She informed me that my membership had expired in February of 2009. I asked her if she could relay a request to Costco management and to the CEO for me: please show members logged into costco.com their membership status (past/upcoming renewal date).

I spent at least 15 minutes searching costco.com for my membership status. Then I spent at least 5 minutes on hold. My conversation with the rep must have lasted anywhere from 5 to 7 minutes (based on the total 11 minute call time). As I told the phone representative, this was time that both of us could have spent better if costco.com would show membership status on the site. Between the two of us, almost half an hour was spent on just this one simple piece of data (not to mention another half hour or so for me to draft this letter). I can’t imagine I’m the only person who’s ever had to make this phone call.

I am a professional web developer and I understand that there may be technological barriers and security concerns involved in getting two disparate systems communicating. And I realize that my seemingly simple request may or may not be simple to implement.

However, displaying membership status on the site could potentially save countless hours of costco staff time and increase internal efficiency and productivity.

For costco members and costco.com users it would help reinforce the Costco brand of “value”. Personally, I enjoy shopping at Costco because it saves me time and money and I am happy with what I know about Costco’s business practices (and because I think WalMart/Sam’s Club is evil – but that’s a separate topic). This experience made me feel that my time was being wasted – eroding away at my positive perception of the Costco brand.

Respecting a customer’s time is incredibly important – especially online. If a customer feels that their time is being wasted, they will take their business elsewhere.

I don’t know if implementing my request will have the same affect as “The $300 Million Button” – http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button – but I think it will be more than worth the effort.

Ironically, the very “Questions & Comments” form that I am using to send you my feedback asked me for my:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Contact Phone #
• Costco Membership #
• Order #

I was already logged in to the costco.com website! I should not have to enter any of this information (except “Order #” if applicable). At the very least, the first 5 fields should have been auto-populated with this information that costco.com already has!

Also, the first time I submitted the form, I got an error and had to re-submit the form:
“Error:The page you are trying to access is not available. Please contact the administrator for more details.”

I did notice that the URL for the Questions & Comments form was not on the costco.com domain but rather egain.net – https://costco.egain.net/system/selfservice.controller?CONFIGURATION=1000&PARTITION_ID=1&CMD=STARTPAGE&USERTYPE=1&LANGUAGE=en&COUNTRY=us
So this may be a limitation of some third party service, but it is another missed opportunity to show respect for the user’s time. Don’t make your users “take the shit with the sugar”!

Thank you,
Andy Ford

Edit (September 2nd, 2009):

I’ve had a few people contact me asking how I got in touch with Mr. Sinegal and if I got a response.

I used their “Contact Us” form on their website and put “Please forward to Jim Sinegal” at the top. I never heard back from anyone.

I’d post the link to the Contact Us form here, but it’s probably the world’s longest URL with so many query strings that I’m not confident that the URL would be the same tomorrow. But, you can get there by clicking the “Customer Service” link (at the very top or bottom of the page), then click on the “Contact Us” link, then click on the “Member Questions & Comments” link to launch another window with the contact form… Only 3 clicks away – usability at its finest!

end