Smooth Selling

The goal of branding any product or service is to lure customers with a promise of reliability, and the services provided by your IT department are no exception . . . If you want employees to embrace a new technology, don't command them to use it - sell it to them!

The campaign was witty, clever and effective. At the start of the nine-month rollout, campaign signs (designed to encourage data sharing) appeared inside bathroom stalls, reading: "Not Everything Should Be Private". At the same time the campaign team organised a "drop" of fortune cookies enclosing the message: "Share what you know and it will come back to you tenfold. InterAction".

Next, colourful signs displaying crisp juicy fruit and the message: "Is Your Data Fresh?" were posted on refrigerator doors in all offices - a theme chosen because, at the time, professionals were being asked to relinquish data sources to the implementation team, who wanted to begin with clean data.

Then signs reading: "Don't Let Lack of Knowledge Leave You All Wet" were posted in shower rooms and over sinks, designed to generate curiosity and questions and to raise interest in InterAction. Next was the "Want Ad" - a cleverly worded sign meant to spark personal interest in InterAction and to notify employees that training would soon begin. That too coincided with a fortune cookie drop. This time, the message inside read: "Grow your fortune through InterAction".

Finally, posters reading: "Refreshing Information. Satisfaction Guaranteed" were posted to coincide with the product launch, to encourage users to test-drive InterAction. This time in a clever play on words to those familiar with legal terms, the fortune cookie drop read: "In life and law, InterAction matters".

And so, Austin, Texas-based Brown McCarroll, a law firm with more than 400 lawyers, and CRM vendor Interface Software recently completed an effective software implementation and rollout, which is resulting in virtually 100 per cent user adoption, marketing efficiencies and strategic business development benefits for Brown McCarroll.

Although lawyers have often been slow to adopt new technology, Brown McCarroll says they have embraced InterAction, which is allowing more targeted and frequent marketing and beginning to realise strategic business benefits. "We currently have 100 per cent of our attorneys, 100 per cent of our secretaries, 100 per cent of our paralegals and select staff on InterAction," says marketing director Bonnie Martin. "We continually get requests for additional support staff to be given the application to assist in contact management. Since our rollout last September, we have had over 7000 new contacts entered, a 14 per cent increase."

And the lessons learned about getting employees to use systems along the way? "Plan well, get strong support from management and, most importantly, have fun!" Martin says. "I think our biggest help in succeeding was that we truly believed in what InterAction could do for our firm - and when a team has that much enthusiasm, we knew that we could spread that enthusiasm to others."

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