Project details
Client: Intuit
Role: Product Designer
URL: turbotax.intuit.com
TurboTax is the leading tax software, providing an easy way to prepare your personal income taxes online. TurboTax Live provides on-demand access to CPAs and EAs for unlimited tax advice, answers, and a final review to make sure your taxes are done right with every dollar you deserve, guaranteed.
The Objective
Defining the problem
Taxes can be tricky, but they don't have to be. TurboTax Live offers premium service, which provides customers the freedom to complete their taxes on their own, along with the peace of mind that expert assistance is nearby. However, where does one turn to if they need immediate help and answers to their questions?
While digital assistants can be highly useful, the software was lacking a direct method for users to quickly contact experts to get their tax questions addressed. Given this, the primary goal of this initiative was to provide customers with a low-barrier method to contact experts and receive quick resolution to their questions.
How might we get customers the right answers in a timely manner...
My Role
It takes an army...
Working in collaboration with the product manager, we reviewed the strategy with key stakeholders to align on customer needs and business goals. My role was to define this experience and drive the design for the tool.
Given the complexity of the project, this cross-functional effort was comprised of multiple teams of developers, content and visual designers, as well as operations to ensure we had appropriate staffing to meet the high-demand. Working in 2-week sprints, I worked closely with the developers to implement the design and drive this initiative forward.
Task-based Analysis
What are users trying to accomplish with this tool?
Expert Assistance
Although expert collaboration was a benefit of the service, many customers felt that expert assistance felt distant when encountering an issue doing their taxes. They weren’t sure where to turn for help, leaving them feeling stuck and just plain frustrated. Many desired the ability to complete their taxes on their own, but still have access to connect with experts for help if needed.
Low-barrier contact
Previous support options consisted of one-way video help - not necessarily ideal for all scenarios or situations. Users often felt a loss of comfort in public space with video, as they may not be in the position to jump on a live cal (or even want to). Lower barrier contact methods were preferred overall, with the ability to collaborate with experts while doing their taxes.
Don't slow me down
Speed to benefit. Access to quick answers that won't take away from the task at hand. In today’s fast paced world, customers are constantly multi-tasking and just want their questions answered quickly so they can move on to the next task. Users desired the ability to quickly connect with the right person who could answer their question(s) — the first time.
Key Learnings
Challenges & Insights
Given that it was critical to understand the three key components make up the experience, I had to thoroughly examine the needs and pain points of both the customer, the agent as well as routing to the chat queue. Prior learnings and research was reviewed and synthesized, which revealed common patterns in pain points overall.
Key Takeaways
- Unexpected complexity of questions - longer handle times
- Lengthy wait times - wait and wonder
- Chat feels impersonal / lack of connection with individual
- Video can be unnecessary for simple questions
- Lack of confidence in "Expert"
"They can see the height and width of the letters, but they can't see me caring."
-Agent feedback
Turn those pain points into design opportunities.
Competitor Analysis
Patterns & Trends
The discovery phase also included a benchmarking of various messaging tools, which were compared for design patterns and common trends. The findings were then examined and applied as an appropriate design treatment for design of the tool.
Key Takeaways
- Familiar bottom right pattern - FAB
- Agent photos to provide transparency and confidence
- Exposed actions for easy access (attach docs, emojis, etc)
- Secondary actions within input bar
- Notifications and alerts of new message
- Periodic messages to communicate state of the agent
Ideations
From sketching to Sketch
Explorations were sketched out and moved into Sketch for wireframing. Once a potential solution had been established, these were converted to clickable prototypes to determine proper flow, as well as identify any missing gaps in the design.
The Outcome
So, what did users think?
Customers like chat!
"Super helpful... gave me the information I needed quickly and easily... made me comfortable with a situation that makes me nervous (tax filing)”
“I had spent an unproductive hour with IRS on a simple question. Catherine was able to solve it in time for me to make an important meeting”
“My chat assistant was super helpful and kind! She fixed the issue and I was able to understand and continue on with my taxes. Thank you!”.
Chat is proving to be the lower barrier to entry that drives more people to contact, and drive conversion.
Not only were both customers and agents pleased with the experience, data revealed that chat users converted significantly higher than users that didn’t contact. Moreover, overall usage rates increased, and customers appeared to prefer this method over a call. Average handle times remain slightly longer than calls, yet we identified a direct correlation with agent chat experience, which will only continue to improve.
Reflections
Learnings & Insights
The ripple effect
The more you dig, the more you uncover. As we continued to gather learnings after launch, we were able to identify patterns that affected both parties — solving for one agent pain point can remarkably enhance the experience on the customer side, and vice versa. Additionally, digging deeper helped us discover key opportunities to improve training, operational efficiencies and the overall execution of chat.
Designing with constraints
While some features may appear straightforward on the surface, the technical feasibility may not necessarily be there. It's critical to keep in constant communication with development, to identify any constraints early and work around them, as well as understand potential technical limitations. Rather than viewing constraints as obstacles that can limit our designs, we can instead utilize them as focus points to think outside the box and help us reach success.
The value of documentation
Maintaining a source of truth is essential. Given the large scale of the project and so many teams involved, at times there was quite a bit of ambiguity. Using a tool such as Jira to log communication, design deliverables as well as design decisions helped guide the direction.
