Above the Forms: Gaining Empathy to Build On

Over the last month, as we conducted our annual in-person town halls and Unite events, I’ve had the opportunity to visit all of our Intuit® ProConnect™ Group offices in the United States and Canada. Unite events are a customer immersion, allowing employees at all levels the chance to spend time with local tax and accounting professionals.

Getting outside of our buildings and into the office … or home office … or coffee shop … with accountants is such an important part of our design process. We went into the wild to learn from our customers, came back together, and shared the stories and insights we gleaned.

We do this to develop empathy. We define empathy as seeing through the eyes of others, hearing through the ears of others and feeling through the hearts of others. Our mission was to develop empathy so deep in each and every one of us that you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins.

Empathy allows us to get inspired and embrace the unexpected – and once we build empathy, we can design for different mindsets, habits and values. The payoff is we get a higher level of understanding of what’s possible, and truly solve problems for our customers.

There were two insights that were common at all of our sites – from San Diego to Plano, from Tucson to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and up in Mississauga, Canada. The first is the passion. The passion from each of our accountants was so strong and the emotion was so powerful. It inspires us at all levels of our organization.

The second insight was around family. Our teams were touched to hear how important family is to our customers, and that takes many forms, from firms made up of siblings and parents, to goals of passing along the business to a child. In turn, we learned than many of our customers, especially smaller firms, regard their clients as family, looking out for them throughout the year, and truly wanting more than just the financial best for them.

We are proud to include customers in all that we do, from our annual State of the Company meetings, our town halls, our end of season celebrations and our community events. When we win, we win together, and we always learn from each other.

I’m thankful for the partnership between our employees and customers. It’s so unique, and I think it’s one of many characteristics that sets us apart at Intuit.

Our goal is to be the One Place where accountants can serve their clients across tax and accounting in a seamless, integrated experience. Thanks to insights we learn from our customers at immersion events such as Unite, and through sources such as our Tax Council, we’re really starting to make substantive progress.

As the calendar year winds down, and the tax season ramps up, I want you to know how happy and thankful I am … for our employees, our customers and our families.