A Recommitment to Better Service

To our Accountant partners: I apologize we’ve let you down with our service levels this year. You trusted us to do a job, which includes providing the highest levels of service over phone, email and chat. And we haven’t met the standards you expect of us and that we require of ourselves. 

I understand the pain this has caused you and your clients. On behalf of all of us at Gusto, I apologize that this has been the case, and promise that we are fully committed to getting back to the excellent levels of service we’ve been known for over the course of the past 10 years. In fact, this is our #1 priority across the entire company today.

How we got here

Since COVID and the economic fallout facing small and medium-sized businesses, we’ve seen an increased need for support. This is particularly true in helping our customers respond to relief programs like the Paycheck Protection Program, Employee Retention Credit, FMLA, more remote workers in new states and many other new issues. 

With the importance and complexity of these factors, and with our growing customer base, quite frankly, we were underprepared and understaffed. As a result, we’ve been inconsistent in providing you and your clients with the support you require as you seek to provide the highest levels of service to your clients. Looking ahead, we’ve identified essential updates and actions to improve the support we provide. 

The way forward together

It is our top company priority to get back to the levels of service we’re known for. To give you more visibility, here are several areas we’re actively working on:

Improving our software and processes to enhance our overall service. Gusto’s team is concentrating efforts to simplify and improve the Gusto experience around all workflows, particularly those highly related to customer service needs. Additionally, we’re also improving Gusto’s back-office processes to empower our service team members better so they can be more efficient and effective when supporting you. Let me touch on a few specific examples, which are not all-inclusive of everything we’re enhancing:

• Our engineering teams are building automated connections to State Tax Agencies to pick up regulation changes, and client SUI rates, to update you, your clients, and our product. These new features will begin to appear over the next couple of months. 
• We’re working on ways to more effectively process the most critical support tickets. Over time, these changes will help resolve pressing tax notices that may result in penalties and interest. This new approach will start on 10/25. 
• A key part of our overall service model means providing greater access through our Help Center with answers to pressing questions when you need it most. We’re enhancing our Help Center resources for our Gusties, your firm, and your clients. Expect to see these updates in the weeks ahead. 

Growing our team and investing more to provide the expert support you and your clients need. Earlier this year, we added more team members (at 4X the previous pace) and invested in their expertise to get back to the strong position we were in pre-COVID with our service levels. Our reality is that the positive impact of hiring additional customer support team members is taking longer than it has in the past due to the additional complexities. 

In retrospect, we needed to grow our team earlier than we did and much faster to support your needs. We’ve learned an important lesson from our mistake, and as you read this note, reinforcements continue to come online to help. Our goal is that you experience a noticeable advancement with your service experience by the end of 2021 as new team members join Gusto. 

A debt of gratitude

We are committed to taking the right actions to improve our partnership with you. Trust is vital in every successful partnership and Gusto has work to do. We always want to hear from you and how we can do better. Please feel free to share any additional thoughts or concerns you have here.

Humbly,

-Tomer and Gusto