User-Generated Content Systems at Intuit (A)

Paul Coletta, a senior customer experience manager, and Floyd Morgan, a principal software engineer, had worked on the TurboTax tax preparation product at Intuit for several years. They had always gravitated toward the new product mindset and with Web 2.0 and were intrigued by the possibilities of launching a new product or service. After spending several years on TurboTax, one Coletta and Morgan were keenly aware of the usability issues or “pain points” that Intuit had identified after working with customers. “Intuit,” Coletta explained, “would collect these pain points and then go back and try to fix them but, in the process, make something less clear or break something else.” Intuit had attempted to rewrite the interview screens and initiated various customer service applications, but none of these efforts solved the larger issue: how to offer users more knowledge about the tax domain. Coletta and Morgan believed that they could leverage Web 2.0 and social technologies, specifically a user contribution system, to improve the TurboTax user experience and provide a solution that could answer most, if not all, user questions.