Millions of people electronically file their taxes online every year. In 2017 alone, more than 52M people filed self-prepared tax returns electronically Turbotax support phone number. From basic individual returns to complex organizational tax situations, e-filing has made it so much easier to file your taxes. But it wasn’t always like this. Not so long ago, most people were skeptical of filing taxes online. What about security? What if you made a mistake? What happened to your return once you submitted it?
One company saw another way and created a product that would transform how we think about, file, and pay our taxes. That company was Intuit, and that product was Turbotax support phone number.
At first glance, the minutiae of tax preparation software might not seem particularly exciting. However, TurboTax grew amazingly fast precisely because tax preparation was seen as such a “boring” problem to solve. Nobody else even thought to tackle a problem like the inefficiencies of filing paper tax returns. Intuit used this to its advantage and focused relentlessly on making its users’ lives easier by taking the pain out of filing tax returns — and they won big.
- How Turbotax helpline phone number evolved first by solving a boring problem more effectively than anyone else
- Why TurboTax’s focus on the experience of filing taxes electronically was so fundamental to the company’s growth, and how it used emotional triggers to intentionally design and create a better tax experience
- What TurboTax’s customer-centric approach to product development in a “boring” market can teach companies in other verticals Turbotax support phone number
TurboTax has become extraordinarily popular in recent years. Although the story of the TurboTax we know today began in 1999, to really understand the rise and rise of TurboTax, we need to travel back more than 30 years to Ronald Reagan’s America of 1983 by Turbotax helpline phone number.
1983–2007: Filing Like It’s 1999, E-File Goes Mainstream by Turbotax helpline phone number
When Intuit launched its personal finance management tool Quicken in 1983, there were already dozens of similar financial products available for the nascent home computer market. Many of these products boasted features and functionality that Quicken lacked. What set Quicken apart from its legions of competitors, however, was that it was the first consumer finance tool to focus heavily on design and user experience Turbotax phone number.
Rather than presenting users with dense, intimidating database-style views, Quicken was designed to look and feel familiar to users by incorporating design elements seen on checks and checkbook registers. This was more than an attempt to differentiate yet another product in a crowded market. It was the first of many signs that Intuit was, at its heart, a design-focused company Turbotax helpline phone number.
The design was a major focus for Intuit’s product teams, but it wasn’t the only focus. Shortly after launching Quicken, Intuit’s co-founder Scott Cook implemented the companies Follow Me Home program. To learn how people were really using Quicken, Intuit dispatched employees to shopping centers and strip malls all over America Turbotax phone number. These employees would approach people purchasing Quicken and ask if they could follow them home and watch them install the software. It was a surprisingly effective way for Intuit to learn about and document problems that real Quicken users were experiencing, both during the installation of the software and during regular use Turbotax helpline phone number. Intuit also relied on data gathered by its “usability labs,” on-site testing environments in which participants used Quicken under observation by Turbotax phone number.
Shortly after the launch of the Follow Me Home program, Intuit realized that while some people were using Quicken as intended — to balance their checkbooks — many were also using Quicken as a bookkeeping tool for their small businesses. It was this insight that led to the development of another immensely popular Intuit product, QuickBooks Turbotax customer service phone number. Intuit may have been shoring up its products against the future competition by focusing extensively on real-world use cases, but the usability labs and Follow Me Home programs were more than that. They were a reflection of Intuit’s approach to software development. Quicken wasn’t just popular because it was easy to use — it was popular because Intuit listened carefully to what its users wanted and how they were actually using Intuit’s products Turbotax support phone number.
The Follow Me Home program is a great example of what Intuit refers to internally as “customer-driven innovation Turbotax support number.” Turbotax phone number as any product manager could tell you, observing real users actually interacting with your product can be immensely beneficial. In Intuit’s case, it allowed the company to observe customers experiencing real problems in real-time — problems that even savvy taxpayers might otherwise struggle to articulate. Observing taxpayers using TurboTax at home often revealed specific problems that may have otherwise been overlooked, such as struggling to complete an insurance claim for hospital expenses b Turbotax phone number. This allowed Intuit to really drill down into the specific problems taxpayers encountered frequently and became a defining characteristic of Intuit’s strongly research-driven approach to product development Turbotax customer service phone number.
Although it would be many years before filing taxes electronically became mainstream, technological advances in tax preparation had been in the works since shortly after Quicken’s launch in the early 1980s. The IRS’ Electronic Filing System (EFS) was actually first devised in 1986 and served as an experiment to gauge public opinion about alternatives to filing paper returns Turbotax customer service phone number. Only five tax preparation specialists in three metropolitan areas — Cincinnati, Ohio; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Phoenix, Arizona — agreed to participate in the program. Even then, only returns from taxpayers that were owed refunds could be processed electronically Turbotax support number.
The technology behind the EFS pilot was archaic by today’s standards, but it was truly remarkable back in 1986. After examining a taxpayer’s return, which had been sent to one of the participating preparers by fax, the tax professional would call the IRS’ service center in Cincinnati Turbotax customer service number. An IRS employee at this service center then connected their telephone to a machine known as a Mitron, a machine that Leonard Holt, a former branch manager of the e-filing project office, described as a modem with a tape drive. Once transmission of the data was complete, the Mitron’s tape was transferred to a mini super-computer known as a Zilog Turbotax support number. This computer then processed and fed the data into the IRS’ Unisys computer system, which had been built using the now largely defunct COBOL programming language Turbotax customer service number.
Despite the potential of the EFS pilot, tax preparers and the general public were highly skeptical Turbotax customer service number. Many people believed the new system was not intended to make taxpayers’ lives easier, and that it was actually designed to surreptitiously collect additional information for auditing purposes. The public’s suspicions notwithstanding, 66 tax preparation professionals participated in the EFS program the following year in 1987, filing approximately 78,000 returns electronically.
By 1988, the IRS had transitioned to a new processing system using the IBM Series 1 16-bit minicomputer Turbotax customer service number. This eliminated the need for an IRS employee to connect their telephone to the Mitron — along with much of the apprehension tax preparers felt about using the system. E-filing was here to stay Turbotax support number.
Fast forward to 1999. As millions of people around the world anxiously waited for airplanes to fall out of the sky and computer systems worldwide to crash due to the infamous “Y2K” computer bug, Intuit’s tax preparation software tool Turbotax support number was accessible online for the very first time Turbotax customer service phone number. Although this is ostensibly the beginning of TurboTax’s story, the tale really began six years earlier, in 1993. That was the year that Intuit acquired tax preparation software company Chipsoft for $225M, the equivalent of around $390M in today’s currency Turbotax customer service phone number.
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