A short description of Live Community and how it works Introduced in Nov. 2007, the TurboTax Live Community created a new paradigm for getting answers to tax questions while consumers prepare their own taxes. Going well beyond traditional in-product help and online support, the TurboTax Live Community is a fully-integrated social application that delivers the most relevant answers when and where customers need them most.
TurboTax customers contribute to the Live Community by asking and answering questions, providing comments and rating and ranking answers so the best information rises to the top. Live Community in turn helps customers get answers to questions while they're preparing their taxes, so they don't have to stop what they're doing, leave the interview process or even have to pick up a phone. They just submit their question and keep on working.
With the Live Community, the top five questions and answers are available on every screen in the product. Customers get amazingly relevant answers without searching. For example, answers to questions about choosing to file jointly or separately are presented on the screen where users select their filing status. Questions and answers are presented and ranked based on customers' voting, rating and viewing behaviors. Since its debut, more than 4 million TurboTax customers have accessed the Live Community
How does the Live Community accomplish business goals?
Customer research indicated that some TurboTax customers lose confidence in their ability to use the software if they have a question while working on their tax return. Exiting the product to call support or to access online FAQs further reduced confidence. TurboTax created a user contribution system to marshal the collective knowledge of more than 14 million customers, effectively connecting people to others with similar tax situations so they can get answers to their questions on every screen without ever exiting the TurboTax software. Last year, the TurboTax Live Community contributed to an overall 40 percent reduction in support calls during the tax season. Because of its success, the Live Community is being rolled out to other products and services throughout Intuit.