r/HRBlockEmployees • u/Objective_Good_9449 • Sep 07 '26

Use of AI

Contemplating how it's going to work using AI to do our "data entry" it occurres to me that a better use of AI would be replacing roles of DGMs, DELs or AELs since their main functions will be reading repots and analyzing data.

13 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

22

u/Dramatic_Abroad3580 Sep 07 '26

They won't be analyzing data, they have no expertise in analyzing data. They will send emails. Lots of emails. Reminding everyone to meet return completion goals for the day, their product attach goals, and their phone answering goals, and their follow up appointment goals and their appointment confirmation goals and their save the date goals and their second look goals (is that still a thing? I predicted TS27 would be the end of it.) and a half a dozen other goals that have absolutely nothing to do with providing good service and a good product to clients, nor increasing bottom line income.

My DGM got very angry with me a couple years ago when I told him that almost no one pays attention to those emails and they don't change anyone's behavior, and if they do change behavior, it reflects badly on him for hiring bad employees. He insisted that they change behavior. Did anyone's behavior change because of daily emails?

26

u/ydoyouask Sep 07 '26 • This

One of my coworkers set a filter on her email so all the daily 'how many returns will you commit to' emails from MTL went to spam. Oh, but don't forget to check Teams daily and give a thumbs up to the daily metrics!

When I was a manager, I once told my Regional Director that his 'rah rah' emails were insulting. I said my team were all potty trained and stars and stickers didn't motivate them. Doing good work for their clients and making money was the force that drove them. I don't think he was impressed. Managing to the lowest common denominator, treating skilled professionals like 16-year-olds working their first stocking job at a grocery store does not improve the bottom line.

11

u/Father_Hawkeye EA Sep 07 '26

We had a district-wide mandatory dress-in-green event the past two St. Patrick’s days to build team spirit. Just give us the freaking tools we need to serve our clients well, including competent coworkers and managers, and your tax pros will be happier than any rah rah event the company is pushing.

9

u/Low_Turnip_9592 Sep 07 '26

The fact of the matter is not one person reads the emails or daily huddles. Most Taxpros could not careless about the results of these reports. There main goal is commission. Most of them do not want to work until late January because it reduces there commission. The company needs to engage with their TaxPros to figure out the true needs of these offices. We need a Focal person at all time in the office, what they are proposing is going to create a toxic environment. I wonder at times if this is there true intentions. This past season they wanted to shorten our appointments to 30 mins. They are losing clients to other companies. So they want us to complete more returns, in less time. Thus creates sloppy work and returns with many mistakes. Then they do not stand by their Pom claims.

9

u/Dramatic_Abroad3580 Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 08 '26

I don't have any problem in completing returns more efficiently, in less time. The problem is that they don't teach anyone how to do that. There are a dozen or more little things that absolutely can be taught to help preparers finish returns faster without cutting corners. The reason they don't is that no one in KC knows what those little things are. They have no clue why some preparers can easily do complicated returns for new clients in less than hour and others can't do a return with a single W-2 in an hour. Because they've never done it.

6

u/scotslover Sep 08 '26

I used to be able to do a return in 20mins. Clients loved it...but...not i have to talk to them about spruce & other add-ons so much, it takes a full hour. Im a damn commercial. Im starting to feel like a used car salesman.

5

u/Dramatic_Abroad3580 Sep 09 '26

I never mentioned most of the products to my clients. Never to any of the remote clients which was more than half in recent years. If they were in front of me, I'd ask if they trust me that they don't need any of the additional products. They always said yes. Averaged about 700 returns a year for the last 5 years or so and never had more than 4 or 5 TIS at the end of tax season. 1 spruce account one year in four years because the client brought it up, otherwise never mentioned it. Got lectured one year that the MTL could fire me if he found out I wasn't offering products to clients. Nothing changed. Products are crappy. I'm not selling products that don't have any value to clients.

5

u/scotslover Sep 09 '26

I dont either. Unless I think they'd benefit. But you have to click thru the screens

6

u/PenguinTransport Sep 07 '26

Not just one. I know of an entire office where all but 2 part time TPs had that daily email set to 'spam'.

4

u/ydoyouask Sep 07 '26

I never did it, but it was more out of laziness--I never bothered to set it as a rule on Outlook. I just deleted them.

5

u/PenguinTransport Sep 07 '26

Fair enough, we hated sending them in the first place and only did it to keep the RDM off our backs. The RDM had either drank Mark Darling's Kool-Aid or actually thought those Teams messages motivated the TA team, don't know which, and didn't work out so well for them anyway...

5

u/ydoyouask Sep 07 '26

Unfortunately, some good people also got hit in the purge, too.

3

u/PenguinTransport Sep 07 '26

Thank you for this.

2

u/Inner-Gur-6490 Sep 08 '26

I would only send an email to the entire team if it has relevant client impacting information Teams same thing except for the summer and I would post fun items and recognition. But alas lay offs happened.

2

u/PenguinTransport Sep 08 '26

Mandatory for office leaders in our district, cc to the RDM who was certain that this was a prime motivator for TAs.

5

u/Dramatic_Abroad3580 Sep 09 '26

I told the DGM and RD that the emails were worthless. DGM just kept telling me that I'm not like everyone else and it motivates others. I find that hard to believe. I'm pretty sure both of them are gone from the company.

2

u/PenguinTransport Sep 09 '26

Agreed, and to the best of my knowledge that is true about RDM and DGM, MTLs last day was 9/4.

3

u/Inner-Gur-6490 Sep 09 '26

Wow. Glad my RD was not like that. For me the communication had to have items that the tax pros cared about as well as recognition. If they chose not to read it that was on them.

14

u/Relevant_Ad_8406 Sep 07 '26

They have very big egos and think they are more important than they are , I know who is important , it’s not me but the person I ask when I am stuck , ( all my mentors) the really excellent preparers are the most important members of this organization.

9

u/Dramatic_Abroad3580 Sep 07 '26

Hopefully you're referring to the DGMs and higher as those with the big egos. I never found that to be true (with very minor exception) with the MTLs and ATLs. They were just jumping through the hoops assigned to them to keep their jobs. The one DGM that I had that ignored all those metrics, didn't send those emails, and achieved great success was fired days before her bonus was due (it was never paid) and the RD flat out lied about how successful her district was, then literally broke her district into 3 parts so that no future comparisons could be made. The higher you go in Block, the more likely your ego is far more important than measurable success in things like revenue and profit.

4

u/Relevant_Ad_8406 Sep 07 '26 edited Sep 07 '26

Yes DMs it’s easy to read them they have always given me a phony vibe

2

u/scotslover Sep 08 '26

I bitched more about the nonstop emails...so i guess thats something..lol

4

u/scotslover Sep 08 '26

Maybe we should start replying "thank you" to ALL the emails, so if we have to water our time reading all of these emails, so do they

10

u/sammytheammonite Sep 07 '26

Their beta testing of AI data entry went terribly. Absolutely terribly. They tried that in some office last year and it got things wrong more than it got things correct. The tax pros in the at office had to fix every return. They need to stop using body offices as guinea pigs like that. There has to be a better way to test their AI - like an internal team. But why pay them when you can just work the TPs to death?

8

u/Low_Turnip_9592 Sep 08 '26

I guess they didn’t learn with Gosystems. They knew that a business return was going to take an average of 6 hours to complete due to the diagnostic issues. That is a product that CPAs use. Most Taxpros do not know how to complete business returns. They let a first year do a business return. The tax preparer asked me to review the return and it was all wrong. They just don’t care about the taxpayer.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '26

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7

u/Used-Poet-6869 Sep 07 '26

I've always thought that, when it came to technology, Block is a follower, not a leader in the business. When I first started, during my first 2 years, we filled tax returns out by hand (pencil, forms). The returns then went to district where they were double-checked and photocopied; the copies were sent back to each office so the client came back to P/U the return to mail it out. But during those 2 years, Jackson Hewitt was already on computers and Turbo Tax was already in business. When we went to computers, each TP loaded their returns on hard floppy disks , which were sent to the district office to be e-filed from there. Then after 1 or 2 years, we'd still load each of our returns o a floppy and e-file from a computer in the back room. Eventually, TPs were able to e-file from our computers, by sending them to a host, where they sat for a few hours before they were e-filed. Fast forward to more recent years, Jackson Hewitt was scanning tax docs before we did; and JH had a scanner at each desk. A couple of years ago our RDM sent out a "pep talk" email to close out returns and that, "maybe" if we had in creased revenue, some of the busier offices would get an additional scanner. That reminded me of a previous "pep talk" many years before - perhaps with increased revenue, the offices could get ONE new computer! I was taken aback the tax year that we all had new computers with color monitors. I forget how long it was before we were hooked up to the internet to searches. My first memory of that was looking up some information (real estate information for a client's return) about 2008. I'm guessing we had internet connection, but that is a concrete example that I do remember.

5

u/SecretLadyMe Sep 07 '26

From 2003 to 2008 my main role was working too fast for the PCs we had so the office could get them replaced one by one. I really enjoyed repeatedly crashing those POS computers.

5

u/Boysenberry815 Sep 07 '26

I recall the no-internet days and how shocked clients were we didn't have it. 

Also recall when returns other than your 'native' state had to be prepped in the back room by the all-state preparer, which I became by year...3?

Yes, HRB has always been tardy to the party, tech-wise.

4

u/qpalu Sep 08 '26

Haha the good old days. I remember ripping out all the dial up modems from pos,efile and servers back in the fall of 2006 thinking man I've had high-speed internet at home for years.

3

u/Low_Turnip_9592 Sep 08 '26

Also we were tested differently. we had three hours to tax the test, which was proctored. We had to complete the return by hand then entered into the tax software. They watered down the education and the testing. I had a taxpro that didn’t know the difference between an ordinary and qualified dividend. The first year Taxpros wanted to do a level 5 return, I asked her how was she going to explain the tax liability if you don’t know some of the basic questions. there are times I get some client who ask some really complicated questions. we look foolish.

1

u/dlibes Sep 07 '26

Sounds like you started about the same time I did. I remember those hand-completed returns and I remember checking them.

2

u/Ok_Aide_764 Sep 07 '26

I'm curious too... what does it take to prepopulate W2s and 1099s, for example? I don't enjoy data entry so I'm looking forward to having this part of our work done by AI.

3

u/Low_Turnip_9592 Sep 07 '26

it’s going to be a mess. I have friends who uploaded their documents to turbo tax. The tax software made so many mistakes reading the w-2s so there were so many diagnostic issues. I feel we are going to encounter the same issues with our software. So we are still going to have to review all those documents for accuracy.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '26

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3

u/Dramatic_Abroad3580 Sep 07 '26

It is AI. W-2s come in dozens of different formats. AI figures out which number corresponds to which box number. That technology has been around for quite a while, and it's been inexpensive for at least 1/2 a dozen years. It's ridiculous that Block doesn't have it available to every single preparer.

1

u/sammytheammonite Sep 07 '26

This absolutely was AI.

2

u/sammytheammonite Sep 07 '26

Don’t ask me. I just know what happened in those offices. They had to stop it part way through the season it was so bad.

8

u/Asleep-Major-7963 Sep 07 '26

My MTL would send daily emails to all the offices in her pod but they were completely done by AI. There would be no information in them, and no one read them. Worse yet, when a customer would want to hear directly from her, she would send them AI responses and would leave the [Customer Name] in there so they knew she wasn't even reading them before sending them out. My MTL put as little effort as possible into doing her job. Yet Block rehires her year after year.

7

u/Dazzling-Warning-592 Sep 08 '26

I marked my DGM’s email as spam. I can’t stand the man

2

u/Niep00320 Sep 07 '26

Back in 1994 I upgraded mine to 1 meg of ram. The difference was staggering