Intuit Does Not Care About Its Pro Series Tax Pro Clients

[JWM]

If you are frustrated by Intuit's seemingly active lack of focus on its clients' priorities, up vote this post. I do not want to bash Intuit here, I just want them to take notice of the fact that they are failing to address the needs of their core clients, tax professionals. Tens of thousands of tax professionals use this software and we are more likely than not willing to provide our insight into improving their product at no cost.  The status quo has got to change. I want to feel for the first time that Intuit Pro Series has my back, not my back up against the wall. I do not know about you, but I would love to see Intuit support

• post categorization/moderation and technical improvements whose goal would be to turn this community into a highly-relevant quick "wiki" type reference tool to identifying and solving problems and improving ease and accuracy of entry than a disorganized whining board;
• focus less on financial services and extended tax practice tools and focus more (allocate staff to) the improving the tax preparation software, using a revamped community to prioritize projects;
• Allocate competent, tax-savvy year-round 24/7 customer service and tax-savvy technical staff to provide 24/7 ad hoc bug analysis and resolution. Not all shifts need be staffed the same, but tax pros work 24/7 around the globe ... Intuit needs to acknowledge this.
• Actually respond to me after I take the time to answer their many many "how are we doing" surveys. (Never once got a reply in 15+ years btw, to the best of my recollection.)

I understand that some things are harder to realize than to suggest. But Intuit could be so much better if their management would do a better job of meeting the needs of their tax pro clients than they have done over the last 4-5 years. And I know there is no shortage of tax pros in this community willing to lend a hand. Come on, Intuit!

[BobKamman]

Tax professionals are Intuit's core clients? Surely you jest.  We are pimples on the face of the moon.  The core customers are TurboTax subscribers.  

[JWM]

Alas a good point ... I said Intuit but I meant Intuit (Pro Series). That is probably the rub right there. 

[TaxGuyBill]

You are correct that Intuit does not care about its ProSeries customers.  And they never will.

As Bob started to mention, their primary customer basis is DIY-ers that use TurboTax and Quickbooks.

Realistically, no company is particularly good now with customer service.  But companies whose primary customer base is tax professionals are much more likely to listen to tax professionals.

[Kathi_at_Intuit]

@JWM Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts so clearly and respectfully. Your passion and dedication as a tax professional shine through, and your concerns are absolutely valid.

We hear you—ProSeries should feel like it’s working with you, not against you. Your ideas regarding improving support, prioritizing tax software development, and creating a more useful, organized community space are well-founded and resonate strongly with what many in the community have voiced.

We’re sharing this feedback with our product and support teams to ensure it’s seen by the right people. Your suggestion to involve experienced tax pros in shaping improvements is especially appreciated.

Thanks again for your advocacy and for helping drive the kind of change we all want to see.
 

[Strongsilence-CPA]

I use LC and I am mostly happy with it, and sometimes happy with tech support.  h

Would you comment on your second point?  focus less on financial services and extended tax practice tools.  I don't know what you mean by financial services and extended tax practice tools. I see Intuit LC spending time and making effort to assist with CPA advisory services.  I appreciate those efforts as it is mostly "free" learning and advisory is likely a good service for me to do soon.  Are you speaking about advisory/Planner and/or Intuit Tax Advisor?

@JWM 

[JWM]

I am specifically thinking of the existence of the various tax banking products/pay by refund products (they have a whole menu), poor quality/tech for tax organizer and invoice vs the seemingly endless number of frequently needed missing or partially-efile ready forms (8858, 8621,5471), the lack of / poor quality of integration between certain forms (ie, fincen114/8938 or 1116/2555/8858, CTC/ODC questionnaire, etc) and the significantly lower quality customer service level (staff experience/knowledge, convoluted/eternally long process for elevating/solving programming errors ...). And since Proseries provides virtually a zero level of professional technical support, we are forced to work with the proseries community where I had to scroll through 57 posts using a general search term only to find out no one had ever raised the issue.... 5-7 years ago I remember technical support for  1-2 years actually improved so much I decided not to change providers, but after 2 years quality is again near zero but I am nearing retirement so not too motivated to invest in other tech provider ... it's a shame because I think polling and working experienced tax pros could identify for example 5 discrete product improvements that would literally put Intuit at the top of the tax pro tech list. I mean, if they cant make the forms easy to use and calculate correctly, they should not be screwing around with bank products, tax organizers and the like.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Have you considered Lacerte?  Cost is $7-9K.

[JWM]

Lacerte's form offering have indeed caught my eye. But since Lacerte is also an intuit product I am not sure I would get better support. Also, the idea of migrating 400 clients for what I hope is less than 5-6 more professional years seems uninteresting. I like Pro Series 90% of the time. I just do not understand why they hate or undervalue me so much that they invest nothing into product development and technical support.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Thank you fine man.  I support your ideas.  It is the community that often helps me more than tech support. So those improvements that you suggested are good.  I advise you to post them to the improvements page if you haven't already. (I think this page is called Ideas over on the LC side.)

To be fair, tax practitioners in the community help with more difficult questions.  Also to be fair, community members are not always timely or available.  So both are needed.