Ugly Green Tool

I completed day 2 of QuickBooks Online (QBO) training! Although we've already used the product in a few different business simulations, today was a little different because we practiced taking customer "cases" (issues submitted online via email/chat) and trying to solve them. We are working in a test environment of UGT (Ugly Green Tool - named by the developers who created it!) which is the tool that the support agents use to process cases.

Basically when a customer case is submitted, it is routed to UGT. Support agents with varying levels of experience/expertise have specific "rights" in UGT that allow them to see cases with a level of difficulty/urgency that matches their experience level. When we get a case, we research the answer in the knowledge base as well as chat with other agents who may already know the answer to that case. Depending on whether the answer is technical in nature, requires a long explanation/instruction, etc., the support agent either calls or emails the customer with a response.

The lack of accounting knowledge is really killing me, but I'm hoping I'll rapidly pick up the debits/credits in the next couple days. We begin interfacing with customers next week, but we will have an experienced agent shadowing us so I'm not too scared about messing up!

The Growth Leader of QBO spoke to CCRP today. I loved her message because it was refreshing to hear how she measures the success of her team. She told a story about a Sales Agent who in his first month, made 70 sales. In the second month he mades 100 sales, then 120 sales in the third month. When this agent had a 1:1 with her, he said his goal in month 4 was to make 150 sales. She told this agent not to make 150 sales. She said "I want you to only make 100 sales, and bring your team up with you to also make 100 sales." She said she valued a team member instilling their success in others a lot more than increasing their own success alone.

Ok, signing out for today but more to come on QBO!

First blog post ever, here goes nothing!

(Drum roll please....) Welcome to my blog! I decided to start a blog in order to capture ideas, random thoughts, funny memories, cool videos - really anything! I just started working in the Customer Connection Rotation Program (CCRP) at Intuit and have a lot of memories already in my first week:

• Brad Smith (Intuit CEO) met with CCRP participants. Brad shared a lot about Intuit's vision to go "social, mobile, global" to transform the lives of our customers.
• I visited 3 retail stores to view Intuit product displays (Target, Costco, Office Max)
• I went on a "Follow-me-home" to meet a QuickBooks user, who showed us how she uses QB in her 3-person business for servicing restaurant equipment.
• The QuickBooks Online Challenge presented each CCRP participant with a fake business to setup on QuickBooks. It's been 5 years since my last accounting course - and boy did it show! Those darn long-term-liabilities...
• CCRP Hoe-Down! (I'll leave it at that - let's just say there were cowboy hats, bandanas, and ribs).
• Rounded out the week with the Business Challenge - where we pretended to be land developers building "Somerset Village" - a student family housing project for Intuit University. Teams worked cross-functionally with a marketer, developer, finance analyst, customer support agent, and project manager. I was the project manager!

This week we kicked off our training on QuickBooks Online to prepare for customer call-backs, the online community, live chat, and email interaction with the customer. Stay tuned for more to come!