Intuit Case Study

As a Systems Design Engineering student, I've always adopted a systems thinking mindset and found that my coursework in addition to past experience in UXR helped me thrive on Intuit's Service Design Team.

Working at a larger org, we also had the chance to work with XFN like PMM, tax experts, and engineering.(This work also shipped within weeks of handing off designs ✨)

What's the challenge?

The high demand at the tax deadline for TurboTax Full Service requires a peak experience revamp for our customers and tax experts in order to increase customer satisfaction and retention.

So, why is this problem worth solving?

Demand at the tax deadline peak for TurboTax Full Service in Canada has emphasized the importance of delivering the best possible experience for our customers and tax experts throughout the tax season.

Peak is defined as the period of time (April 15 - May 02 2022) where the spike in demand exceeds Tax Assistant/Expert availability, putting in jeopardy a customer’s ability to file on time.

What's the current state?

1. Feb 2 - Apr 30, net promotor score of +40 pt
2. Feb 2 - May 31, net promotor score of +22pt
where the Global Benchmark (by SurveyMonkey) is +47pt

From all of this, we came up with a How Might We statement to anchor ourselves to as we designed.

How might we reduce the NPS drop in TY21 to less than 5 points while maintaining a consistent quality experience with TurboTax during Peak based on data in SurveyMonkey?

Who are the key players?

Tax Expert

Tax Experts "work virtually with TurboTax customers to help them with their taxes, answer their questions, and review their tax returns before filing.”

Tax Prep Assistant (TPA)

Tax Prep Assistants act as an intermediary between customers and Tax Experts. They gather preliminary information from the customer, help the customer choose their product offering, and send information to Tax Experts.

Customer

Customers include the general public who will be filing their taxes with varying tax situations. This user base has no defining qualities.

To help us identify areas of focus for the project, we also considered the permutations of TPA and Expert availability during Peak and whether the tax return has historically been filed by the Canadian tax deadline of April 30 or not.

What are some quantitative goals?

Reduce the change in NPS from -18 pts in TY20 (2021) to -5 pts in TY21 (2022).

What are some qualitative goals?

Inform customers about the high demand

Better set user expectations

Provide appropriate alternatives to customers

What research methods and tools did we employ?

Analyzing historic survey data collected through SurveyMonkey.

Outside-in competitive research.

Discovery & ideation workshops with cross-functional partners.

What did we learn from the surveys?

The surveys were created in 2021, prior to when I joined the team. The focus of our research was on analyzing the data collected and presenting it clearly.

Expert Pain Points

Lack of client responsiveness until “crunch” time
Pressure to meet filing goals and overwhelming workload leads to fatigue-quality risk
Take over of incomplete files from other experts often requires rework to complete

Customer Pain Points

Long waiting period, “The wait time is unacceptable.”
Lack of communication, “My expert just disappeared ..”
”It takes so long with no explanation.”
Failure to file taxes on time, “Zero support. Filed my taxes late.”

While the total number of responses was 218, the majority of responses were collected during the peak tax period from April 5 2021 to May 3 2021. This further supports the assumption that survey results can be extremely polarizing and may not accurately represent user sentiment.

But why did we pick surveys as our main research method?

An inexpensive testing method of conducting research.

Offers a straightforward analysis and visualization of the data, SurveyMonkey also allows us to filter through all the data with key words.

Users can fill out the survey anonymously, leaving them more open to sharing truthfully.

Survey results can be extremely polarizing.

Higher measure of error in unmoderated testing as test-takers may aim to complete the survey as quickly as possible.

Variability in user understanding of questions that are more open-ended (variants on a scale of 1-10 may mean different things to different users).

Always looking from the outside-in

Conducted competitive research with other companies that had tackled the peak experience problem in the past.

Companies like Amazon deal with peak during the holiday season, when customers make purchases on December 24 in hopes of a Christmas miracle or companies like AirCanada experience peak demand when all families plan their travels around the singular week every student is out of school.

This is all to say: Managing the peaks and valleys of demand isn't a new problem.

Key takeaways

Inform and educate customers about services

Manage expert capacity and workload

Advertising through various channels

Differential pricing based on customer and time segmentation

What were the research goals?

1. Identify and prioritize problems collaboratively
2. Align cross-functional stakeholders on the problem space

What were our desired outcomes?

A prioritized list of HMW (how might we ...) problem statements to kickstart future ideation and act as a set of guiding principles in the design phase.

At Intuit, we followed the Double Diamond Methodology and the discovery workshop helped with the first stage of discovering the problem. In this workshop, we had partners from design, product marketing, and service delivery. Having the team of cross functional partners with different POVs helped create a holistic research environment and opportunity for discussion.

So, how might we ...

For customers

1. Set timing expectations upfront during onboarding (FUE)?
a. Explain the what, how, and why

2. Better communicate with customers during info gathering?
a. The impact of not providing info on time
b. The progress and timeline updates
c. Flag risks while keeping the customer comfortable

For experts

1. TPA - HMW enable TPAs to set timing expectation during welcome calls?
a. Provide ETA
b. Provide alternative next steps/options if customer is at risk of not filing on time

2. HMW help experts prioritize engagements?
a. Peak return prioritization criteria
b. Redirect customers to a better fit

What were the research goals?

1. Ideate solutions to solve top problems collectively
2. Identify the impact on both product and service
3. Prioritize solutions

What were our desired outcomes?

A prioritized list of potential solutions.

What was the outcome?

10 major solutions were identified and prioritized based on customer impact, business impact, and feasibility. 5 of these solutions will be implemented in TY21.

The most interesting part of this internship role as a Service Design focused intern was how we worked with cross functional partners such as Product Marketing and the Service Delivery team. Having the opportunity to think of solutions in and out of product allowed me to design more comprehensively and identify the best user experience!

Sharing the process upfront

When a user lands on the page, we provides a step by step on the process and expected timelines, allowing users to know what to anticipate.

This transparency improves a user's trust with the product, and also helps users plan ahead to make sure they begin filing their taxes before the peak time period.

Inform customers about approaching deadlines and provide alternative solutions

Users are made aware of the tax deadline and timeline expectations through the use of a banner above the CTA.

Users are also prompted to see other TurboTax products, promoting transparency and funneling users to other alternatives.

Integrate progressive disclosure through visual indicators such as content changes and colour

As the tax deadline approaches, the same banner from the first page changes colour to act as a warning and links out to a modal providing more detail on what this means for the customer.

Data collection

Integrating passive insights tools to track the user interactions/behaviour in product.

For example:
1. How many users click the link in the modal?
2. Do users view other TurboTax products before continuing down Full Services despite potential delays?

Historical comparisons

Compare survey results from TY21 to TY20 to track the impact of efforts to customers during peak.

Post-experiment user interviews

Conduct user interviews with Experts as a retro on their TY21 experience to understand the impacts of the suggested initiatives and how to support future iterations.