Intuit CEO Apologizes After Major Service Outage

The president and CEO of small business finance software company Intuit, Brad Smith, apologized to Intuit's customers in the form of a company blog post, promising to earn back their trust following a widespread service failure earlier in the week.

Following a routine maintenance procedure Tuesday night, an accidental power failure during that procedure affected both the company's primary and backup systems, taking a number of Intuit Websites and services offline. The outage lasted until Thursday for some customers, when Intuit sites, including TurboTax Online, QuickBooks Online, Quicken and QuickBase, were brought back online.

"I deeply apologize for the pain we have caused those of you affected by this week's outage. We hold ourselves to the highest standards in dependability and customer service, and over the past two days, we have failed to live up to those expectations," Smith wrote. "My leaders and I have spoken to a number of you and there is simply no excuse for having such a negative impact on you. It is our priority to work with those of you who are affected and, where we can, make things right. We have all-hands on deck to help you resolve the issues caused by this outage."

Smith said while the company worked to restore sites and services as quickly as possible and bring services back in the safest, most reliable way, he said he understood client frustration and apologized again for the length of time it took to fix the problem. "We understand the important role our services play in your business and life. And we take that responsibility very seriously," he wrote. "I want to thank you for your business and your patience. We will work our hardest to earn back your trust."

In addition to the apology, Smith took pains to explain the root cause of the incident, the aforementioned "accidental but severe" power failure during a routine maintenance procedure that affected Intuit's primary and backup systems, and to state there was no evidence of a security breach or attack on the company's servers. Smith said at this time he does not believe there was any damage or loss to customer data. "At this stage, we have teams monitoring the performance of applications and further investigating the cause of the problem so that we can learn from this outage and prevent it from happening again," he said.