TurboTax Full Service at Intuit

Summary:

In 2021, Intuit launched TurboTax Full Service - a new experience where a tax expert is assigned to you to file your tax return. Given its novel nature, senior leadership wanted several members of the Business Insights team to monitor and hold weekly report outs on Full Service’s customer experience.

This case study will examine Full Service’s original design and the process gaps my Business Insights team identified, the immediate remedy that was put in place, my team’s root cause analysis for our users’ pain points, the various research studies our findings kicked off, and our recommendations to leadership for future seasons. This project is NDA protected so I will not be revealing all the details.

Full Service Original Design & Process Gaps

Full Service could be summarized into 3 major parts:

At each of these phases, customers and experts would connect over a video call or through a chat system to communicate.

It’s also worth noting that in the beginning of the tax season, majority of customers will be in the Onboarding phase, and as the tax season continues, most customers’ progress will shift over time as well. Additionally, Full Service was launched as a small pilot in the prior year to test the experience. 

My team’s original task was to evaluate Full Service’s holistic customer experience by observing user interactions and monitoring Full Service’s KPIs to provide weekly updates to senior leadership. Our weekly leadership share outs covered:

  • KPI performances

  • An iterative customer journey map based on our mixed-methodology findings

  • Clips of the agent-customer interactions to showcase insights into the holistic user journey

Without going into too many details or technical terms, my team discovered that the Full Service Funnel was plagued with “leaks” and "“debris” that negatively impacted customers’ experience and tax experts’ ability to serve their customers well. 

  • A “leak” was when a Full Service customer tries to contact their assigned tax agent, but mistakenly ends up in another support queue

  • “Debris” was when a non-Full Service related topic came through the Full Service support queue. “Debris” resulted in Full Service agents being unable to answer the customer’s question and having to transfer them to the appropriate agent.

To make things more chaotic, the leaks that we had discovered actually was negatively impacting other TurboTax experiences as well. We needed to patch the leaks ASAP.

Immediate Remedy

Shortly after my team discovered the leaks, and senior leadership saw how they could heavily impact the rest of TurboTax’s business, the product team implemented a short term remedy for the 2020 tax year: a new service category called Full Service Triage* to catch all of these leaks.

  • If a customer calls into TurboTax and the customer is registered as a Full Service customer, they’ll be automatically routed to the Full Service Triage experience. 

To everyone’s surprise, Full Service Triage became a mine of user insights.

Analyzing Full Service Triage

What took Intuit by surprise when Full Service was fully launched was how needy customers were to their tax agents. Customers often called in for various reasons, and the Full Service Triage queue captured all of the unplanned Full Service leaks and issues could be found here, and everyone wanted to know what were the main issues, why were they happening, and what steps could the company take to prevent them from happening again.

Step 1: Identifying Users’ Pain Points

Because there were over 50,000 Full Service Triage calls, we used an AI powered speech analytics model to help us identify call themes and sentiment. In order to train the model to identify the themes, I analyzed about 600 Full Service user interactions to map out key words and phrases said by customers and tax experts (400 initially to train the model in 2 weeks, and an additional 200 as the tax season continued to update and refine the model). This enabled my team to move onto examining deeper insights, such as conducting root cause analysis on why all of these issues were happening.

Step 2: Understanding the Why

I joined a cross-functional, tiger team that consisted of several Product Managers, Business Insights Analyst, and a UX Researcher to dig into the root cause of Full Service’s pain points. Our small, ragtag team had access to different parts of TurboTax’s business which allowed us to interview and observe different key users in the Full Service experience. On top of analyzing key data points we tracked throughout customers’ Full Service experience, my team’s findings kicked off a number of other research initiatives to understand users’ Full Service experience: I interviewed Intuit’s tax experts, observed multiple Full Service tax expert focus groups, and analyzed customers’ diary studies that our UX Researcher gathered.

Step 3: Next Steps

My team participated in conducting and analyzing different usability tests the product launched to see if any of the iterations could help address user pain points.

Due to this project being NDA protected, I won’t be covering my findings.

However an important constraint we had to take into account was that every day, the tax deadline got closer: In the beginning of tax season, we were able to make big iterations on Full Service without major consequence. But as the tax deadline got closer (and the procrastinators began filing), we had to adjust how we were handling each of the user pain points. After the tax deadline though, the product team was able to run a small pilot of the revamped TurboTax Full Service experience, and I was able to study how this redesigned experience compared to the original service.

As mentioned above, I will not be revealing what the root causes of the Full Service leaks were.

Conclusion

In summary, this case study sheds light on the journey of TurboTax Full Service from its pilot service to its next iteration. Our tiger team of Product Managers, developers, Business Insights Analysts, and a UX Researcher meticulously, analyzed, and intervened to address critical process gaps in Full Service. 

The Full Service Triage emerged as a valuable tool for capturing user insights and understanding their needs in real-time. By delving into users' pain points, conducting root cause analysis, and collaborating with cross-functional teams, we paved the way for iterative improvements and a revamped TurboTax Full Service experience. While specific findings are NDA protected, the success lies in the continuous adaptation and enhancement of Full Service, ensuring a seamless and satisfying user experience during tax season and beyond.