Intuit Bakes Community into their Digital Marketing

“We wanted to use reviews to make our product better and also wanted to make sure that we shared them transparently so that people can look at the worst and the best reviews.” [Seth Greenberg, VP Global Media and Digital Marketing, Intuit Consumer Group-TurboTax]

I like examples of how brands go beyond adding social outposts and presences around the Web and bring the two-way conversation to their own Web site by way of customer reviews. A little while ago we talked about the benefit of making such a move with a guest post by Gianluca Diegoli.

In January 2010, Intuit created a new user interface that allows you to find people like you and people you know.  FriendsLikeYou.com is a database of 100,000 publicly facing reviews. In this interview with eMarketer, Seth Greenberg explains why and how they rolled out the site.

Some of the questions they wanted to address are: What are people afraid of? What is preventing someone from having the confidence to use TurboTax instead of going to a tax store? Intuit worked with Bazaarvoice for the engine that collects reviews, and Gigya, the connective tissue that makes the site network-agnostic to Facebook or Twitter.

The company gives customers the tools to easily share reviews with their social networks -- good or bad. What's in store for Intuit next? According to Greenberg:

• developing a better user interface
• real-time testing in different variations
• getting more of the 10 million people who go through the site write more reviews
• leveraging reviews for loyalty initiatives to make people feel more connected to the company's brand throughout the year 

What Diegoli said in his post a couple of years back is still valid: whoever writes, giving you the gift of their time, wants (1) to be sure that you will really read that feedback, (2) wants to be helpful to others and, (3) wants to be visible in his/her effort.

Is it not the case with you? You may note that we were talking about Dell, and Richard Binhammer joined the conversation in the comments.

If you enjoyed this post from Conversation Agent, subscribe, share and like it.

Comments

[Rosemary ONeill]

Kudos to Intuit for their fearlessness! We've always had a policy of leaving all reviews (good or bad) visible in our community as well. In a certain way, it builds another layer of credibility and trust between you and your visitors/customers. Let's hope that more big brands start engaging in this honest way!

[Ian Greenleigh]

Great spotlight, Valeria. We're incredibly proud of the work we've done with Intuit, and of the initiative they've taken in opening up the FinServ vertical to genuine customer conversations. Thanks for helping them get the word out!