* A torrent of statistics -- daily write-ups, weekly summaries, hand-lettered charts covering a whole quarter -- tracks the tech-support department's performance for all to see. How many callers have to wait longer than 60 seconds? How many give up? At the company's Monday morning meetings, says Cook, "the first four numbers we go through have to do with customer service. Even before we get to revenues. It creates real peer pressure to improve service -- people see how we're doing each week."
At a lot of companies, pressure to improve customer service creates a white-collar sweatshop: harried managers browbeat supervisors; supervisors keep an iron grip on employees. Intuit, by contrast, is structured to encourage cooperation and to make improvements through innovation rather than through tighter controls. Greg Ceniceroz, recently promoted from tech-support rep to product specialist, is assigned the job of figuring out how to cut down on the average time spent with each customer. His first step toward a solution: a big loose-leaf reference binder containing answers to customers' most frequent questions, for every rep's desk. He encourages reps to submit questions and answers for inclusion in the binder and makes sure those who do get a public thank-you.
Kneisley, meanwhile, notices that management is looking for a volunteer to chair a group dubbed the Innovative Ideas Committee, which has been charged with collating and following up on every product-improvement idea emanating from the tech-support department and from Quicken users. She writes a four-page proposal about what she thinks the group ought to do, and gets the job. "We worked with her to set the committee's objectives," says Tom LeFevre, "since she had been here only a few months. But she was very interested. And the more interested someone is, the better job they'll do."
Involvement of that sort, of course, translates into a sense of ownership more valuable and more productive than any amount of iron-grip supervision. "Most of us work at least 50 hours a week," says Kneisley. "We don't get any extra compensation. But we do have a profit-sharing plan, and if Intuit does well, we will, too."
* * *
Scott Cook is showing me Intuit's latest ad campaign. I'm a little incredulous, but there it is: Send for a copy of Quicken. Pay only an $8 shipping-and-handling charge. If you don't think you're doing useful work within a few minutes, don't pay for the product. No, not "send it back for a refund." Keep it. Just don't pay for it.
Why would a company do this?
"It's like the Japanese," Cook says.
"Oh," I answer, trying to think of the last time a Japanese company offered me something virtually free. Fortunately, Cook elaborates.
"It's like the Japanese assembly lines, where they have only two hours' worth of inventory. There's no margin for error -- they have to have superreliability from their suppliers." Cook goes to his bookshelf, pulling out a copy of The Machine That Changed the World, the new book about Toyota's "lean production" system. "What we're doing is the Toyota approach. We take away the safety net. If you do that, you have to get it right."
The more Cook talks, the more the scenes I have observed at Intuit begin to fall into place.
Tech support, for example. Here are 40 people answering all kinds of crazy questions -- for free. Here is a $500,000 state-of-the-art telephone system, installed in late 1989 just so callers won't have to wait so long. This isn't normal: nearly all of Intuit's competitors put a limit on tech support, some charging for it and some curtailing it so many months after purchase. And nearly every company with an after-sale call-in line doesn't mind keeping customers waiting for a few minutes.
But then, those companies have a safety net. "Most software companies would go broke if they didn't charge for tech support," argues Cook. "We said, We're not going to charge. If our customers have problems, we pay. That makes us get the product right the first time."
Take the product itself. For $50 or less -- sometimes as low as $20 on store-sponsored special sales -- you can buy a copy of Quicken. In its latest form, you get a program capable not only of writing checks but of tracking investments, generating profit-and-loss statements, and doing a dozen other chores a small-business owner or financially sophisticated consumer might want to do on a computer. You also get a 460-page manual, the right to regular upgrades at modest cost, and access to unlimited help. Once again: abnormal. Quicken's chief competitor lists for three and a half times as much as Quicken, and Quicken's price could probably double before Intuit noticed much of a sales decline.
But that would be a safety net. "We sell an inexpensive product, and we offer free customer support," says Alex Young. "We have to make sure it's right when it goes out the door." Suddenly, refinements like the Follow-Me-Home program make perfect sense.
And finally, look at Intuit's marketing. The no-pay ad, for example. "We heard from our focus groups that people really didn't believe the product could be so easy to use," recalls Mari Latterell. "After all, software never is. So we did this big advertising campaign -- 'You'll be using Quicken in six minutes or it's free.' The goal was to put our money where our mouth is." Even the company's tiny sales force -- two people -- begins to seem comprehensible. Outside salespeople could maybe push more product into stores. But depending on pull-through marketing means the company can't survive without satisfying its customers. "When someone comes in and thanks a clerk for selling him Quicken," says marketing vice-president John Monson, "there's nothing a salesperson could do that would come close to being as powerful a recommendation."
