Intuit’s Laura Messerschmitt: Listen to your customers
As many of you who are Biznik members probably remember, Laura Messerschmitt is the person at Intuit who contributed a lot of articles to this community back in April. We’re thrilled that Intuit is continuing it’s sponsorship of this community by sponsoring BizJam. Laura will be attending, and there’s a good reason to drop by her table and say hello: she’ll have a free copy of Learning Accounting Essentials for every BizJam attendee.
I interviewed Laura to learn a bit more about Intuit, and what small businesses like ours can learn from their success.
Q: Tell me briefly what you do at Intuit.
I am a Product Manager in our QuickBooks group. I regularly go out to visit small businesses and see how they are managing their finances. I then go back to the office and design QuickBooks features that I think will help them streamline their finances or make it easier for them to manage and control their finances.
Q: Tell me the short version of the Intuit story.
In 1982, Scott Cook noticed that his wife was struggling to balance her checkbook. He thought that there must be a better way. He developed the first version of a software called Quicken to help his wife and other consumers to manage their personal finances. Since then, the company has grown into business finance software (QuickBooks), tax software (TurboTax), payroll, website design, and other services.
Q: How does a large organization like Intuit connect with and understand the smallest of small businesses?
We started as a small business! And, from day one of building this company, Scott Cook talked to his customers to find out how he could help them. He would sit outside of a store and when he saw someone buying Quicken, he would ask if he could come with them and watch them install and use the software. Based on these visits, he would make improvements to the software. To this day, we have kept this tradition: Our employees regularly go out on what we call “Follow me home†visits where we watch our customers manage their business and learn what is keeping them up at night.
Q: Why is Intuit interested in sponsoring BizJam?
We started our relationship with Biznik back in April. We’ve been very impressed with how Biznik is so committed to the solo-entrepreneur and in making them successful. Intuit is also committed to helping solo-entrepreneurs, so it’s a good fit. I can’t wait to come to BizJam and meet everyone who I’ve been interacting with online.
Q: Intuit has been called “the most admired software company in America” for three years in a row by Fortune Magazine. Why do you think that is?
Personally, I think it’s because we are so focused on doing the right thing by helping small businesses be successful and by making sure that we are connected with our customers. I’ve always been amazed at how pervasive the culture is. Every product manager, marketing manager, and senior leader has gone out to visit a small business customer and has, often times, developed an ongoing relationship with the business owner to run ideas off of. As such, decisions at Intuit are informed by the desire to help small business owners achieve their business dreams by trying to solve their everyday problems.
Q: Is there any lesson that a small business can take from that?
Absolutely! My advice would be to conduct research with your customers to find out how to improve your products and services. Ask a subset of your customers: How did you find out about my business? What made you decide to buy something from me? What did I do well in serving you? What could I do better? As long as you are open to hearing their answers, it will help you go a long way towards improving your business.