In the fast lane with Steuerring – they know what sets them apart!

Whether employee, trainee or retired worker, there aren't many people who enjoy doing their annual income tax return. That's just one of the reasons why there are many services that can easily take on the process for you. According to Helen Arnd, PR consultant at income tax help association „Steuerring“, competition in the sector is huge. So for her, personality is key to standing out from the crowd. Her income tax help association's 330,000 members can avail of 1,100 consultancies across Germany. And Steuerring is one of the country's largest income tax help associations. Helen Arnd discusses her experiences with feedback from members and gives us an insight into why constructive criticism is so valuable.

What are the essential features a business needs to stand out from the competition?

In addition to offering members a fixed-price professional service for general tax-related matters, we provide support with personality – we're not some distant, offish tax accountant or a computer program. We're in personal contact with our members and we speak their language. For us, our members aren't just a number, they are people that we help to exercise their right to claim back overpaid taxes. Our advisors are there for members all year round, ready to answer each and every little tax-related query.

What has been your experience of using ProvenExpert so far?

We've been with ProvenExpert since late 2018 and firmly believe that the results are having a positive impact on our membership growth, and have strengthened our brand too. All our advisors and our entire association have been thrilled to see so many members participate in our survey: in a short time we've received over 2,000 ratings and the vast majority of these are really positive! This has motivated us hugely to continue giving our best.

Why do you think your response rate has been so high, and so positive?

Since our association has a large membership, we are at an advantage when it comes to sample size for surveys. But aside from that, our advisors are simply very competent and provide great service for our members every day. Many members have been with us at our association for years, because they're very happy with the service. And now they have the chance to share their views and publicly state why they choose our association. ProvenExpert has helped us give our members a voice. We can now also make our association's strong position clearly visible online.

How important is member feedback for you as an income tax help association?

Feedback from our members is really crucial to us, because our competition won't be caught napping. And it's not just limited to other income tax help associations, but also includes apps which are supposed to offer a quick and easy way to create tax returns. Sharing feedback from our satisfied members online gives us a leg up on the competition. It's also important for us to gain an impression of the current state of affairs and learn from members about areas in which we could improve, because not everyone is 100 percent satisfied, of course. But I don't view that as negative at all – we are continuously looking for ways to improve. And that's where constructive criticism is really helpful to us. Already from the first survey results we were able to gain valuable insights which were then passed on to our advisors.

Do you use other review platforms besides ProvenExpert?

Google is used by some members to leave reviews. However we find that Google doesn't provide us with the same clear overview as ProvenExpert. With ProvenExpert, we – and our visitors – have everything clearly visible in a single glance.

What tools do you use to send out feedback invitations?

We've used the ProvenExpert feature for sending out emails and that worked really well. We can see ourselves using the survey cards in future too. It's a much more personal way for our advisors to request feedback from our members. But first, we want to wait for the current round of surveys to complete, since the feedback from this so far has been phenomenal.

Would you recommend ProvenExpert to others and why?

I'd like to take the opportunity here to mention the personable and patient customer service offered by ProvenExpert. At Steuerring, we always want to run through all scenarios in advance and consider the possible consequences. We are really happy with the cooperation and support we've received from ProvenExpert in this respect. Also, the platform is particularly accessible and is intuitive to use – in just a short time we've been able to achieve positive and constructive results. To sum up what it offers in a few words: Customer service, easy operation, efficiency and effectiveness.