The Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice does­n’t rank among Amer­i­cans’ favorite agen­cies at any time of year, but that anti-IRS sen­ti­ment is per­haps most promi­nent dur­ing tax sea­son as con­sumers strug­gle to make sense of their tax­es. For its part, the IRS is using Twit­ter to push out con­tent like #IRSTax­Tips to per­haps ease that pain. In fact, a page on the IRS web­site lists the var­i­ous plat­forms it uses and what kind of con­tent it pro­vides for tax pro­fes­sion­als in par­tic­u­lar. But the rep­u­ta­tion remains.

What could the IRS poten­tial­ly imple­ment for the 2016 tax sea­son to pro­vide more use­ful con­tent and to per­haps bet­ter its rep­u­ta­tion among Amer­i­can con­sumers in the process? Today, to mark the U.S. tax fil­ing dead­line, let’s explore what the IRS can learn from agen­cies and brands in oth­er indus­tries that also aren’t well-liked by con­sumers – or at least not wide­ly adored.

The TSA

Andy Beal, CEO of social media mon­i­tor­ing tool Track­ur, points to anoth­er agency that doesn’t always have the best rep­u­ta­tion among con­sumers: The Trans­porta­tion Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion.

“It would cer­tain­ly be an uphill bat­tle for the IRS to improve its rep­u­ta­tion. The best place to start would be to demon­strate that it has learned valu­able lessons from the recent scan­dals that have plagued it,” Beal said. “I would also sug­gest it takes a look at its fed­er­al cousin, the TSA. They have made an admirable job of per­son­al­iz­ing their depart­ment by the use of their blog.”

The Cable & Air­line Indus­tries

For his part, Jason Chan, group direc­tor of mobile and social plat­form at RGA, points to oth­er brands that “suf­fer from a lot of cus­tomer ser­vice abuse,” like cable com­pa­nies or air­lines.

“They take a lot abuse on Twit­ter in par­tic­u­lar from angry cus­tomers because their flights have been can­celed or there’s huge delays and no one is respond­ing to them. And cable com­pa­nies are doing lots of real­ly crazy things with down time and not get­ting back to cus­tomers in an accept­able man­ner,” Chan said. “There’s just lots of neg­a­tive things and cer­tain indus­tries that have an over­all neg­a­tive image, what ends up hap­pen­ing is con­sumers take to social to vent and com­plain. In those busi­ness­es, you kind of have to expect that.”

Chan’s best advice for the IRS, which may find itself in a sim­i­lar boat this time of year? Make lemon­ade out of lemons.

He points to KLM as an air­line brand that has a strong cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment that can “han­dle pret­ty much any request that comes in through Face­book and Twit­ter.”

That means the brand can deal with prob­lems 24 hours a day.

“They have tak­en what would tra­di­tion­al­ly be a chan­nel where con­sumers com­plain to a poten­tial rev­enue stream and way to mar­ket them­selves,” Chan said. “By invest­ing heav­i­ly in social, they can han­dle dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions that con­sumers have. There’s fore­sight from senior lead­er­ship to use it in pos­i­tive ways rather than just for cus­tomer ser­vice. If more brands adopt­ed [that strat­e­gy], they could shift the per­cep­tion of the indus­try around.”

Chan sug­gests the IRS try to use social in a more pos­i­tive way, such as pro­mot­ing chat ses­sions with a series around spe­cif­ic top­ics like cap­i­tal gains tax­es.

“They could say, ‘We’ll host a one-hour forum on Twit­ter on Thurs­day and you can ask any ques­tions and we’ll have experts on hand,’” Chan said. “[The IRS could have] a real­ly focused con­ver­sa­tion about the top­ic on top of people’s minds. One way to change per­cep­tion is by being help­ful and proactive…and these are real­ly the sort of straight­for­ward and basic tac­tics around things they can do.”

Tur­b­o­Tax

Chan also sug­gests the IRS could do more to help demys­ti­fy all of the changes in the tax code every year.

“One good thing Tur­b­o­Tax does is it sum­ma­rizes the changes for con­sumers upfront,” Chan said. “That’s some­thing the IRS deter­mines them­selves. There’s no rea­son they couldn’t do it, too.”

The IRS could also do more to help con­sumers deter­mine which tax form to file, Chan said. That would give the brand an oppor­tu­ni­ty to help con­sumers at the very out­set.

At the same time, how­ev­er, the approach must be sim­ple and easy to use.

“There’s def­i­nite­ly poten­tial for the IRS to do some­thing inter­est­ing in regard to chang­ing per­cep­tion and be more proac­tive about it,” Chan said. “They could cre­ate more con­tent that is less tech­ni­cal in nature and sim­pler to digest.

One way to do that might also be to use info­graph­ics, Chan said. That’s because they take com­plex data or trends and break it down into a man­ner that is easy to under­stand. He sug­gests the IRS con­sid­er info­graph­ics around top­ics like how quick­ly con­sumers get their refunds in the first two months of the year ver­sus the last two months of the fil­ing peri­od.

“That’s anoth­er thing the IRS can help do to help change its per­cep­tion,” Chan said. “[The IRS has] all this data. They just need to pack­age it in a way that makes it appeal­ing and shift the per­cep­tions.”

If the IRS spent time think­ing about what resources it has on hand and how it could be use­ful, it could demys­ti­fy some com­plex top­ics for con­sumers, which would be a great place to start.

“The rea­son I bring up Tur­b­o­Tax is because they make what is a pret­ty mun­dane and bor­ing and frus­trat­ing task very sim­ple and they almost make you feel like, ‘I enjoyed doing that,’” Chan said. “Every year, I time myself and it gets short­er every year and I cred­it them with under­stand­ing my sce­nario.”

He sug­gests IRS fol­low TurboTax’s lead and ask con­sumers small ques­tions along the way that help refine the pic­ture of what their tax sit­u­a­tion is.

“They’re the ones who are essen­tial­ly cre­at­ing the tax code. Instead of pub­lish­ing a list of changes in a way that requires an accoun­tant to deci­pher, they could trans­late it and [make] that con­tent more digestible for the layper­son.”

In addi­tion, Chan sug­gests the IRS do some social lis­ten­ing and proac­tive­ly answer ques­tions on Twit­ter or do a Red­dit AMA with dif­fer­ent employ­ees at the IRS.

“There’s lots of dif­fer­ent avenues,” he said.

Your turn: what do you think the IRS can do to improve its brand rep­u­ta­tion?