Never say Intuit / QuickBooks is not responsive to your feedback. Sometime it takes two years and sometime, as in this case, it takes more than 10 years. However, keep repeating your feedback.
There are about five million QuickBooks users. Only a few give Intuit much feedback, but that is still a lot of feedback. I get widely differing answers each time I ask users, "What are the most important new features you want in QuickBooks?" I began publicly asking, "How should Intuit change?" in 2003. The amazing Intuit CEO, Brad Smith, the best of my Intuit friends, recently told me that he contacted me even before he reported to work at Intuit. He soon had Intuit create two new website solely for this. Feedback responses like this might never happen anywhere but at Intuit.
One of Intuit's first employees invented the now industry-standard software usability tests. Scott Cook, the beyond amazing Intuit founder, embraced them. He spent months taking yellow-pad notes, as hundreds of novice and professional computer users tried to use and break various pre-release versions of Quicken. Scott might not have otherwise considered many programming changes he had made during these months. However, the many changes let novices install Quicken 1.0 and print a check in 10 minutes. At the time, computer professionals needed more than an hour to do this with competing programs. That is one big reason why Quicken soon had dominated its market. It also is a big reason why Quicken and QuickBooks do this today, with around 95% market shares at retail.
It was very exciting, for my QuickBooks Advisory Council, to see these usability tests still in action. 20 years after Scott began using usability tests; there were new programs and websites. There are still observer note pads. However, cameras now record tester hands, eyes, and conversations, while devices merge computer screen and keystroke records. Microsoft is one of many companies that copied Intuit in this area, but with a key difference. At Microsoft, engineers write reports for managers, about what they see. At Intuit, the programming manager, for the product, personally observes and interacts with users. That seemingly minor feedback difference is a big part of why Intuit is so successful.
All this, and all the survey requests you get from Intuit, show how dedicated Intuit is to finding what we want. 18 years after Intuit created its inspiring Mission Statement and Operating Values, they still have the same bang. "WOW! Many companies say their most important job is satisfying the customer. We don't. We believe that satisfying the customer is simply the minimum requirement for staying in business. Therefore, we don't seek merely to satisfy our customers; we seek to wow them."
Wow indeed! This means that only an active campaign is likely to bring your feedback to the top. Only by actively campaigning to get friends, associates, and other QuickBooks users to give provide similar feedback might you see what you want. You also often must persist over a long period. My unique relationship with Brad once got a QuickBooks fix, for a friend, distributed to everyone in five days (counting the weekend before Christmas). However, I am often very happy when Intuit adopts one of my feedback ideas in two or three years. The more you involve yourself with Intuit, however, the more likely you are to become unhappy when it does not adopt your best idea for a long time. When that happens, I can guarantee that you did not do enough to push the change with other users and Intuit. I also can guarantee that your change is not a top priority for large numbers of QuickBooks users. If very large numbers of users and potential users tell Intuit (feedback, feedback, feedback) they want anything, Intuit normally tries to satisfy them. Do Right By All Our Customers also is part of the Intuit Mission Statement and Operating Values.
We are now finally getting something accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors like me knew we needed more than 10 years ago. I am talking about the new terrific tech support, for accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors. It simply insures that we get the same Knowledge base items that Intuit Tech Support agents get. Until now, accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors, using the QuickBooks ProAdvisors support knowledgebase, only got a subset of the Knowledgebase Intuit gave to its Tech Support personnel. We can now be the Tech Support heroes. Of course, this also means that we too can read answers without understanding them.
It is strange to consider that such a simple change will give terrific tech support for accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors. However, until now the Tech Support database was much larger than the one available to outsiders (non-Intuit employees). It also is now very simple to use this new support, simply go to the new and easily remembered http://www.QBProAdvisor.com/Helpme.
As enthused as I am about this, I must still ask the same question I asked at my 2002 QuickBooks Advisory Council meeting and many other times. That question is why should Intuit have a better database for QuickBooks support personnel than it has for accounting professionals, QuickBooks ProAdvisors, and ordinary QuickBooks users.
To me, there was always only one answer for the separate support databases. I very clearly recall writing about this to many of my Intuit friends, as I often do. I said I did not like the only answer that made sense to me. That is, Intuit was holding back on these answers so it could charge more for Tech Support. I never got a denial on this.
I also used my 2002 – 2003 QuickBooks Advisory Council meeting and many emails, to my Intuit friends, to push for tech-support backed user-to-user support. To me, it was far better to have this than to have annual tech support surges that left users on hold for an hour or so. I began pushing this when Intuit had a limited web presence and probably no forums. By then I had given 7,000+ mainly QuickBooks newsgroup answers, with many as an active newsgroup moderator.
The ouster of a former TurboTax division manager appears related my 2002. It related to needless, intrusive, and buggy copy protection. I did not start the protest, or use the affected TurboTax at the time (I used the ProSeries version). However, as with my QuickBooks 2000 boycott, over per company tax-table charges, my position, and aggressive time-consuming actions, let me get results others might not. Unfortunately, in the case of the TurboTax disaster, many users remained very upset long after Intuit fixed problems and agreed to my proposal that it drop the copy protection after April 15. Yes, any user could get a free copy of TurboTax, without copy protection, after April 15, because I got Intuit to agree to this quickly.
At the time of my TurboTax boycott, I thought Intuit might remove me from the QuickBooks Advisory Council. However, Steve Bennett was the former amazing Intuit CEO. He increased revenue 300% and net 400% in 7 years. He also knew, because I told him, that I only attack Intuit when I feel its mistakes badly hurt it and its users, so it is less able to revolutionize our lives. That is why Steve soon wrote, "Keep raising hell when Intuit does something wrong."
It also is why you should subscribe and click an ad if you find anything useful here.
Brad soon became the new TurboTax division head. A very smart person soon added to my tech-support backed user-to-user forum idea. They added many links to TurboTax. They used the link positions, together with the text of user help requests, to suggest a FEW possible answers. They then let users post their questions, to very appropriate sections in my tech-support backed user-to-user forums, with one click. After a year, Brad extended this to QuickBooks and other Intuit programs. By then he had the good Live Community name and proof of what I knew five years earlier. Many users got faster and better answers from other users than they usually got from tech support personnel. They also were happier when they got answers from other users, especially if the users had similar backgrounds. This won Intuit an international award and saved it 7% OF PERSONNEL COSTS.
Of course, as soon as this happened I told had a rush of next generation feedback for my Intuit friends. They include permitting OPTIONAL (but fast and easy) user-to-user chat, video, remote diagnostics, remote reports, remote system control, with automatic and user created (system and network) profiles. Intuit can do all this quickly and easily, but it already has too many potential monopoly problems. Less grandiose feedback has a better chance of becoming reality.
I am, of course, very happy about the new terrific tech support for accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors, even if it took 8 to 12 years. However, the related question is why should only accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors get this terrific tech support database? It is nice to be a hero to clients, but many clients are as smart as or smarter than accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors. Besides, the drop-dead-simple Intuit approach can let many QuickBooks users solve most of their own problems.
The reality is that this terrific tech support, for accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors is simply feel-good marketing hype. Anyone can go to http://www.QBProAdvisor.com/Helpme to solve QuickBooks problems. If that were not the case, or if you simply want to see the full details of the extra help QuickBooks ProAdvisors really get, then please contact me for QuickBooks Accounting Software help. I will gladly give you my QuickBooks ProAdvisor login without charge.
As with the NEW terrific tech support, for accounting professionals and QuickBooks ProAdvisors, we can all use all the help we can get.
