CCH Small Firm Services Consolidates Sales and Support

NOTE TO ATX USERS: OK, I get that many of you don't agree with Jeff Gramlich's assessment or my subsequent coverage of what appeared to be a fairly mundane business decision. Quit clogging my mailbox and post your comments here --- I'm opening this post to comments now.

gll

Jeff Gramlich, President of the CCH Small Firm Services group, confirmed today that they are consolidating all sales and support functions for both the ATX and the TaxWise products in their Rome and Kennesaw, Georgia facilities. The Caribou, Maine facility will retain its development organization. The consolidation effort began last year and has been, says Gramlich, "extremely successful and well-received by their user base. Having all support people proximate to one another facilitates better cross-training and makes possible extended coverage hours. We are now offering week-end support and have extended daily support until midnight."

Local Caribou news coverage has speculated (wildly according to CCH) that this move foreshadows the ultimate closure of the Maine facility. Gramlich says the developers there are, and will remain, integral to the product and that they will be in Caribou indefinitely.

CCH has offered relocation or severance packages to those impacted employees in Maine. Several have reportedly moved to Georgia and are already on the job in both Rome and Kennesaw.

gll

PS: I'll bet encouraging people to move to Georgia from "the most north-easterly city in the U.S." in January is a lot easier that the other way around! [smile]

Comments

[Maribeth]

CCH has made major blunders since acquiring ATX. Dropping the ATX Community message board five days before April 15th was the first one. What kind of management makes a decision to drop the #1 tool that its customer base is using five days before the major deadline? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Eliminating the Maine customer support right before the start of tax season was another blunder. CCH will have to dramatically improve in their support and in their attitude before I renew next year. And I will not transition to TaxWise. It won't happen.

[Eli]

Charging an additional $10.00 per bank product filed is another blunder. No where on their site or at the time of sale was this $10.00 transmission fee ever mentioned. I will definitely start looking elsewhere for software for next year.

[Jack in Ohio]

I am a 5 year user of ATX, and the I.T. person at our firm. I have called tech support 8 times in 5 years and always received excellent and knowledgable support.

I called today (I am on hold right now for 47 minutes), with a program question about an e-file error concerning an entry on Schedule C. The "technician" (I use that word hesitantly) that answered, did not even know the purpose of Schedule C.

CCH has drastically "improved" (if you believe that, I have a bridge for sale) tech support just days before the start of the busiest part of tax season???

CCH is either looking to trim it's client base or show a business loss for next season. I am definitely NOT going to maintian a business relationship with a company that provides "well below acceptable" customer service.

[Tom]

As much as Jeff says otherwise, ATX customers are not thrilled with the drop off in the level of support. ATX is good software, formerly made great by the support staff and they way they listened to the customer base. Life is not "peachy" for us long-time ATXers who were promised nothing would change this year from the CCH takeover.

[TxYank]

CCH has , indeed , accomplished many changes since acquiring ATX software. Unfortunately , all of those changes are negative ones.
I will add one more blunder to the long list of inane decisions made by the "Brains" of CCH; Charging extra for E-filing seems to defeat the objective of IRS to encourage more usage by tax preparers, but has succeeded in "miffing us off"

[KC Jenkins]

Not only was it extremely stupid to fire a bunch of support staff in late Dec, and to move those they did not fire, from Maine to Ga, so that they are busy getting relocated rather than giving support, it has NOT improved user access to support. The wait time last year, even in the busiest early days of the tax season, was seldom more than 10-15 minutes. After the first couple of weeks, it was normally only a minute or less. Now, 30 minutes to an hour are not unusual. No way is this an improvement.

ATX support was, in the past, truly exceptional. The support team really cared about the customers. They would go to great lengths to help us. And the Community Board really did build a feeling of community for it's users. The new management killed that board on APRIL 13, 2007.

CCH is a company that does not seem to care at all about the customers they 'bought'. They are going to lose a lot of us next year. For any who really want to know how ATX users feel, visit the NEW unofficial ATX Community board. http://www.atxcommunity.com/index.php?showforum=1

[GeneInAlabama]

I have been an ATX user since 1995 and have seen it develope into an exceptional value over the years. I assume that is why CCH is downgrading the service. The profit margin is not large enough for a large company and the competition of an upcoming organization is eliminated. I couldn't be ruthless enough in a big business to succeed, I don't have the guts for it.

[Margaret Champion]

I have been an ATX user since 1998. As a sole practitioner, tech support and the community forum were invaluable and extremely helpful to me over the years. While I was fortunate to seldom have severe problems, it was astonishing to see the principal user support, the forum, yanked without explanation just prior to the deadline last year. That act alone cast a dark shadow over the future of this program.
It is extremely discouraging to see Taxwise, an inferior product, being given the star treatment over ATX. As seen from the other comments and the alternative forum, we users are, for the most part, loyal to a great product and the people who have stood behind it. For goodness sakes, we sent a barbeque feast for the staff a few years ago! How many businesses can say the same? We felt, no, knew that the staff really cared about us. Does CCH? It doesn't look promising today.

[Ron]

What really scares the daylights out of me is that Mr. Gramlich, who is president of the CCH Small Firm Services group, thinks that the consolidation effort has been "extremely successful and well received by their user base". If he truly believes that, it does not bode well for any of CCH small firms group. If Mr Gramlich is as blind as his comments lead us to believe, CCH needs to make a executive managerial change and make it quick! My definition of "extremely successful" may not be accurate, but I know sure as God made little green apples that Mr. Gramlich's definition is way, way out there. Spend some time on the phone or message boards with your user base. Spend some time on the phone in the Customer Service, Sales, or Technical Support rooms, Mr. Gramlich, and then give us your opinion again. If it is the same opinion, then one of us needs help!. BTW, I have used ATX since it was Saber and have a relatively low ATX customer number. And I have also worked for CCH in its sales department back when CCH had outside sales people. This is neither the CCH nor the ATX mentality that led to both of those companies becoming extremely successful and profitable. I sure hope someone at Corporate is listening! Oh, and I have it from very reliable sources, that ATX was very, very profitable prior to the CCH acquistion. (And that is no doubt true, otherwise CCH would not have looked twice.) An old saying comes to mind - Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. Which will it be CCH?

[Tom]

In the end, what I really think is going to happen is that CCH is just going to eliminate ATX products completely and force us to take TaxWise. That is what I believe is really going on. However, based on what I've read, ATX is a better product and far superior than any of the TaxWise products. Why couldn't CCH just leave well enough alone. Why did CCH have to mess things up for the customers? And it's not just ATX. A friend of mine tells me that CCH is also messing up the Kleinrock products. The CDs are shipping out late. The Kleinrock tech support is not as good as it was before CCH took over Kleinrock There is an old saying that goes like this "If it's not broke, don't fix it." Well, CCH, plesae do us ALL favor..stop trying to "fix" ATX and Kleinrock products. You have done enough damage already.

[Janitor Bob]

I guess this is just another example of what happens when a product gets too good. Someone (CCH in this case) buys it and subsequently destroys it. We may not be able to stop CCH from destroying our ATX software and casting aside the people who made it great....but we do not have to sit and take the 100% pure bull-shit that I read from Mr. Gramlich in his article. The Customer base is NOT happy!

[Lloyd Hudson]

I have been a customer of ATX (Saber) since 1997. I have always enjoyed the tech support and the software itself. Having used other products over the years, I felt that ATX Max was the best bang for my buck. The community forum was the greatest source for both tax and software issues. If I had a problem that I could not solve myself in a few minutes, my super support number was on speed dial. Do not ever remember excessive hold times and once connected the problem was resolved quickly. Now we have unexplained hidden charges, shipping fees, no forum, experienced support folks laid off. I fail to see how CCH thinks this is better or more satisfying. Before the season began it took over 30 minutes to get through and then another 2 support personnel and another 30 minutes to answer a question. If you are going to make changes to a seasonal product, do it in August not late December or early January. Or even worse April. Mr. Gramlich , your user base will get smaller,maybe that was the goal.

[HV Ken]

I have been with ATX since at least 1996. The ATX of today no longer resembles the ATX of even a few years ago. The continual customer unfriendly decisions since CCH became involved had me take a serious look at Drake last season, and I was very close to switching. In the end, the emotional cost of change won out. Quite frankly, I still love ATX, the software, but I have nothing but disdain for ATX, the company. In the past, I felt like a client (denotes relationship) of ATX - now I feel like merely a customer (denotes transactional). Those of use posting here and over on the unofficial ATX community site represent somewhere between 20-50 users out of 30,000. In the end, will our opinions or feelings really matter?

[Tom P]

I too am unhappy with the tenor of the changes at ATX. The most telling change in my opinon was the change in the guarantee (formerly valid until April 15, now good only for 30 days, and then only if you jump through some hoops).

I am trying to be fair, and I remain hopeful that the program will remain a quality solution to my needs, but the series of changes seen to date gives me little reason to have faith!

Also, in regards to tech support, the company has posted a blurb of apology/explanation on their web site. Here is what they have said: "Some customers are calling the CS Dept and encountering busy signals or are hearing the message to call back later due to high volume. We are having phone issues that we are trying to resolve with the help of AT&T. We apologize for this problem; the only resolution we have is to keep trying to contact CS until you get thru. We are receiving incoming calls from the minute we open until we close. We are keeping the "Latest News" page up-to-date, to help reduce the issues that require a phone call.

The CS Dept is open 8am to 10pm weekdays, plus 9-5 on Saturdays. "

[Lenny Holt]

I wanted to take an opportunity to apologize to those customers who have had trouble accessing ATX support this week. We have been working around the clock to address the reasons for the temporary problems—most of which were the result of the implementation of a new phone system. Call times have been dramatically reduced today and we believe the issues will be completely resolved by the end of day today. We thank you for your patience and regret any problems you have encountered. We appreciate our customers greatly and we are committed to serving you well by offering the products and services that meet your needs. I also want to reassure all of our customers that we are committed to continuing the ATX product line and that we will do everything necessary to deliver a high level of service for you this tax season and in the future.

Lenny Holt

Sr. Vice President

CCH Small Firm Services

[OldJack]

Mr. Lenny Holt: We ATX users might believe your comment if we would see someones head roll at CCH.

[Tom - Again]

Mr. Holt,

I have it from a reliable source that the phones in the ATX support center in Carribou are working just fine. Are you sure the phones don't work because some bonehead decided 2 weeks before tax season to consolidate support and not add phone capacity in GA. Brilliant!

[Jack in Ohio]

Mr. Holt.

I am offended that you consider me to be that ignorant. Apparently you did NOT read my prior post. Your technical support problems are NOT telephone related.

Maybe you should go down to the front lines and take some technical calls? You undoubtedly could not possible be any less informed about the ATX product than the "tech support" (again I use that word hesitantly) I had to speak with.

The only competent tech person I communicated with was William Tasker. It took William just 20 minutes to find the problem and a solution, and an additional 5 minutes to answer my additional question about the program glitch.

If you EVER decide to make or allow him to leave, you will be making your fourth or fifth TITANIC and a FATAL mistake.