Building Bridges Through Listening
Creating year-round social initiatives for a seasonal product is tricky enough. Creating interest for something that many people dread adds another layer of complexity to this challenge.
Alaina has figured out how to engage her customer base during the tax off-season in a way that makes the stressful experience of filing your taxes feel effortless and fun. By listening closely and empathetically to her customers through social media, she has developed a sixth sense when it comes to knowing what they want to see in their tax software.
Through a focused internal effort, she has also built bridges between herself and departments all across the organization. By becoming the known expert on customer needs and wants, she ensures that their voice is heard and represented throughout the company.
This two-part punch of social listening and proactive networking has helped transform TurboTax into a receptive and reactive brand with a year-round presence.
In This Episode
- How an empathetic social pro can create an internal bridge for customer care
- Why successful social initiatives means close listening to your customer’s voice
- How a public forum leads to valuable customer care opportunities
- Why innovative customer programs means a startup approach and a fun, empathetic team
Quotes From This Episode
“Social is a way to connect customer care to PR.” —@alainamaloney (highlight to tweet)
“Our audience on Facebook is an audience of your everyday customer, whereas our answers exchange community is a crowd of engaged experts.” —@alainamaloney
“We may only be January through mid-April seasonal business, but taxes are impacting your everyday life.” —@alainamaloney
“Targeting is an evolving area where we do our best to keep up and leverage data on customers.” —@alainamaloney
“We have a team of innovation catalysts who do a lot of experimental stuff.” —@alainamaloney
“Empowering people and their finances is something that is such a challenge in our country and across the world.” —@alainamaloney
“We’re in there to let customers know if they had a poor experience, or if they’re not happy with a certain area, that we are listening.” —@alainamaloney
Resources
- Alaina Maloney on Twitter: @alainamaloney
- TurboTax on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, and Amazon
- TurboTax Tax Parties
See you next week!