Jackson Hewitt improves efficiency and boosts star ratings
Jackson Hewitt streamlined its Google review management process with Sprinklr, reducing average case handling time by 80% and ensuring a consistent brand voice across 5,200+ locations.
The Challenge
Jackson Hewitt makes tax preparation easy and efficient. But when the company encountered inefficiencies in its social media management workflow, it decided to reevaluate its toolset.
Managing customer feedback effectively is critical for any company with a large, distributed presence. As the second-largest assisted tax preparation company in the U.S., Jackson Hewitt operates over 5,200 locations across all 50 states. With so many offices, maintaining a consistent brand experience and responding to customer feedback in a timely and effective manner became a significant challenge, particularly on Google Business Profile (GBP).
Jackson Hewitt faced a few key issues:
Fragmented review management: Each location was independently responsible for managing and responding to Google reviews, leading to inconsistent messaging and varying levels of engagement. Franchisees, who are independently owned and operated, often provided responses that did not align with the company’s brand standards or tone.
Compliance and training gaps: With thousands of reviews across multiple locations, the risk of non-compliant or inappropriate responses increased. Without centralized oversight or proper training for agents, ensuring replies met regulatory and brand guidelines was a daunting task.
Inefficient workflows: Internally, the team struggled with inefficiencies in managing GBP accounts. They faced long loading times, inaccurate search functionalities and limited filtering options, which hindered productivity and delayed response times. The lack of a streamlined process made it difficult to monitor performance and escalate issues effectively.
These challenges resulted in slower response times, reduced productivity and an inconsistent brand voice, all of which negatively impacted Jackson Hewitt’s ability to manage its online reputation effectively. To solve this, the company needed greater scalability, compliance management, and centralization — and they sought Sprinklr to help.
“We were able to take a fractured process with no consistency that was based on individual performance in 5,200 locations and centralize it, so that we have a single brand message, one voice for Jackson Hewitt.”
The Solution
To address the challenges of managing reviews across 5,200+ locations, Jackson Hewitt expanded its use of Sprinklr to create a unified platform that would centralize all Google review responses.
The company was already using Sprinklr in its contact center, where Sprinklr Social and Social Listening allow the team to see everything in one place, gather insights and handle social media responses. A unified platform would enable Jackson Hewitt to simplify review management, improve response times and provide comprehensive oversight of all customer interactions.
Increased scalability
Sprinklr's GBP account addition workflow provided a scalable solution for Jackson Hewitt's social media team. This new workflow allows the team to efficiently add and manage GBP accounts in bulk, without impacting system performance. As Jackson Hewitt grows, they can rely on Sprinklr to help them track similar metrics, stay on top of communication and project a consistent brand voice.
Streamlined review response process
Jackson Hewitt also implemented Sprinklr AI+ and established a library of carefully crafted, pre-approved responses to Google reviews. Together, these capabilities allow the social media team to efficiently generate and personalize responses. They’ve created up to five options for each Jackson Hewitt location, ensuring quick turnaround and consistency across all locations. Additionally, the social media team has set up a process to promptly escalate any issues reported in reviews to ensure they are addressed effectively.
The Outcome
Centralized management leads to an 80% reduction in average case handling time and improved consistency in messaging
Internally, the Google review process has become much more seamless. The team can now view and manage all of the reviews in one place, and the information is easy to aggregate and articulate to others. This change has resulted in the team becoming much more strategic in their efforts to improve ratings. Jackson Hewitt's average case handling time has gone from 10 minutes to around two minutes — an 80% reduction.
“We’re also answering basically 100% of all reviews, where it was probably more like 40% in the past," explains Bergstrom.
During peak times, Sprinklr’s capabilities have drastically lightened the load. The social media team uses a Sprinklr dashboard to track review volume, which averages around 1,000 Google reviews each month during busy seasons. This insight has allowed them to establish internal KPIs and respond to reviews more promptly.
“Even during tax season, Sprinklr’s ability to organize everything into work queues has really streamlined our process,” Bergstrom says. “We’re handling a lot more reviews now, and we’ve become much more efficient, managing everything with about half the effort we used to need."
By streamlining the review response process and improving overall efficiency, Sprinklr has enabled Jackson Hewitt to take a much more strategic and organized approach to managing GBP accounts and responding to reviews. These efforts help the company deliver a more consistent customer experience, whether from an individual franchise or from a corporate-owned storefront.
“We were able to take a fractured process with no consistency that was based on individual performance in 5,200 locations and centralize it, so that we have a single brand message, one voice for Jackson Hewitt,” says Bergstrom.
