Companies Can Learn From Turbo Tax How to Stay Current

When one looks to find companies going “online” and joining the electronic age to promote their services, taxes are one of the last things that would come to my, and I’m sure many other people’s, minds.  However, Turbo Tax has completely changed my view of this and made me rethink what I thought I knew about boring taxes.  With the release of the new Turbo Tax App, I discovered just how much any company can use and embrace technology if they are smart about it, and Turbo Tax is doing just that.  Who would’ve thought a tax program would be so cutting edge by creating an App that takes pictures of your tax form and enables you to do your taxes on your phone?  The App does contain the following limitations:

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•        Don’t own a home or have kids
•        Only have W-2, interest, or unemployment income to report
•       Earned less than $100K ($120K if married)

         

             Still, the App is perfect for the college and young adult professional demographic. All one has to do is snap a photo with their iphone, answer a few questions, and then click a button and ones taxes are all filed! This is pretty genius of Turbo Tax to me.  They not only are staying current with new trends and technology; they are setting the bar. Not just the iphone phone can use the App but the Android Tablet can as well.  Turbo Tax has also jumped on the Twitter bandwagon with Team Turbo Tax where they answer questions or help with problems that people tweet about! They take it a step further to ask people they have previously helped to fill out a short survey to help them know how they are doing.

https://twitter.com/#!/TeamTurboTax

To me, Turbo Tax is setting an amazing example that no matter how boring your product may seem, you can create a HUGE fan base by staying current with the times and offering unique services. Companies can definitely learn a lesson from how creative Turbo Tax has been with the changing of the times.


By: Johanna Meinecke

Can I have a pizza with social media on it?

On March 24th during the Louisville vs. Florida March Madness basketball game, I placed an order for pizza through my twitter account @ChazALawrence.  I sent tweets out to the following pizza companies twitter accounts: @dominos, @pizzahut, and @papajohns.

The purpose of this was one to enjoy a hot pizza, and second to see what big pizza companies are actively taking steps to listen on social media to prevent crisis, generate leads, and provide customer service.  Many people would be ordering pizza during the basketball game and especially from @papajohns who is big sponsor of Louisville.  After placing the order on twitter I viewed each of the different pizza twitter accounts to see if they were currently tweeting.  I discovered @dominos and @pizzahut were tweeting when I placed my order.  @papajohns on the other hand had not tweeted since earlier that day.  After waiting about 20 minutes,  I received a kind reply from @dominos.

After that I went to dominos.com and ordered my pizza right away.  In the response back you can see @dominos is using Radian6 to help listen on social media.  I applaud @dominos for investing into social media listening tools.  @dominos has also had a few crisis and has learned from them.  They are actively listening ready to respond back, address concerns, and foster positive feedback.  I never received a response back from @pizzahut or @papajohns.  I felt ignored from @pizzahut because I knew they were actively tweeting and responding back to customers when I ordered my pizza.  @pizzahut might need to invest more into social media listening.  I've also always been a frequent buyer of @pizzahut.  @papajohns really needs to invest into social media listening.

So in closing I give the award of Best Social Media Pizza Company to @dominos.  Maybe one day soon we will be able to tweet or facebook our pizza and food orders to companies.

- Chaz Lawrence

@ChazALawrence

Facebook.com/ChazALawrence