Professionally Prepared Tax Returns… Online

As an extension of TurboTax’s successful line of tax preparation software programs, Intuit introduced TurboTax Personal Pro for those that require the help of a pro to get their taxes done right, but don’t require a face-to-face relationship with a tax person. TurboTax Personal Pro is a professional tax preparation service where users provide their tax information online, meet with an experienced tax pro over the phone, and then the tax pro completes, signs and files your taxes for you.

Personalized Tax Preparation Minus the Person

After launching the new TurboTax Personal Pro product the previous year and finding success, Intuit realized that there was a market of potential customers who either already used the TurboTax software but were looking for a more robust service due to increased tax complexity, or those who have previously used other tax services and felt that they could take their taxes into their own hands. Intuit determined that this audience wanted a higher involvement in the tax preparation process, but although they were willing to do some of the work, they were afraid that they might get it wrong. Knowing that this was their target audience, they knew that the second version of their Personal Pro service would need to help users feel more comfortable with the process due to the fact that they were losing some of the personalization of a face-to-face meeting with a tax person.  To help them accomplish this, Intuit turned to Mindflood to put a human face on the impersonal process of online tax preparation.

One Seamless Process

Working closely with Intuit’s development team, Mindflood set out to create a Flash-based dashboard application that would guide users through the tax preparation process using a video-based concierge. Mindflood produced all video and interactive Flash assets and worked with Intuit’s in-house development team to integrate the Flash dashboard application with their Flex infrastructure, creating a seamless end-to-end experience for the user. To help sell the service to consumers, Mindflood also created an in-depth overview section with video and graphics.

Adding Personality to the Tax Process

The video concierge would play a key role throughout the entire online process, she needed to act as the “always available” guide that humanized the daunting process while leading the user through different scenarios. To seamlessly integrate the concierge into the Personal Pro product, the first stage of planning involved carefully mapping out the customer-facing experience that the user would need to follow throughout the step-by-step process, taking into consideration the different scenarios that could occur throughout. After determining all of the possible scenarios, Mindflood began the task of casting the part, scripting out each scene and creating extensive storyboards to bring the concept to life.

Behind the Scenes

To get all of the necessary footage, a video shoot was organized and the concierge was shot on green screen in true HD. The shoot proved to be challenging due to the large amount of footage and scenarios that needed to be captured in a one-day shoot. The integration of props and different interactions with on-screen items that would need to be integrated in Flash later in the development process proved additional challenges. After capturing all of the necessary footage, high-level compositing and motion graphics were used to create multiple videos that would then be integrated in Flash. After heavy Flash production and programming, the alpha-channel video was seamlessly integrated into the Flash dashboard.

Interfacing with Intuit

After extensive Flash programming of the user dashboard and necessary forms, the team set to work on interfacing the dashboard with Intuit’s product back-end. There were many technical challenges that were faced to accomplish this task. The team decided to implement a loading strategy to minimize video download times and used an intelligent Flash framework using ActionsScript 2.0 classes in an easy-to-maintain code library.

Filing it Away

The TurboTax Personal Pro service launched in January of 2007 right before tax season hit high gear. The innovative online application provided tax filers with a new option to file their taxes online with the help of a pro. Successful integration of Personal Pro’s video concierge simplified the process guiding users through each step so that customers could rest assured that their taxes would be filed like a pro.