Tips for rolling out FieldPulse to a team that's resistant to new software?

Pro tip: Start with your most respected skeptic, not your biggest enthusiast.

We had a guy — 22 years in the field, never touched a smartphone for work — who everyone looked up to. I spent two weeks just training him, let him break things, fixed them together, gave him input on how we configured the app. Once he started telling other guys "actually this saves me time," adoption flipped practically overnight. The skeptics trusted him more than they trusted me or management.

Also: never roll out during your busy season. We tried that once with a different system. Disaster.

This is really helpful, Josh — thank you. I hadn't thought about targeting a respected skeptic specifically, but you're right, that could carry more weight than any training session I run.

Did you give him any incentives or recognition for being the "pilot"? Or was the involvement itself enough?

No formal incentives — though I did make sure his manager knew to acknowledge him publicly in a team meeting. What mattered more was that I actually listened when he said something didn't make sense for field workflows. Changed a couple of our checklist templates based on his feedback, which he then told everyone about. That ownership piece was key.

In my experience, the mistake is showing people every feature at once. FieldPulse's got a lot going on — you dump that on someone who's already resistant, they shut down.

We started with just two things: viewing their schedule and marking jobs complete. Nothing else for the first two weeks. Once that was muscle memory, we added photos. Then checklists. Took about six weeks total but adoption was way better than our previous attempt where we tried to do everything day one.

Also — and this might be controversial — we let the old paper system run parallel for the first month. Gave people an escape hatch so they weren't panicking if the app felt broken. The paper trail naturally fell off once they trusted the digital one.

I have to respectfully push back on the parallel system approach — we tried that and it nearly killed our adoption. Technicians just defaulted to paper because it was familiar, and we spent three months cleaning up data integrity issues when the two systems drifted apart.

What worked for us was mandatory cutoff with robust support. Day one of rollout, paper dispatch was gone. But we had two people dedicated to nothing but answering FieldPulse questions for the first three weeks — phone, text, whatever. Response time under 10 minutes. When people trust help is available, the resistance drops fast.

My take: parallel systems feel safe but create ambiguity. Commit and support heavily.

Fair — I can see how that goes wrong with a bigger team. We're only 8 techs, so maybe the drift risk was lower. The dedicated support person idea is solid regardless.

Hi Paula! Love this question — we see this come up a lot and want to make sure you're set up for success.

A few resources that might help alongside the community wisdom here:

• We published this piece on rolling out to 50+ person teams — some of the principles scale down well.
• Your CSM can set up a "champions program" template if that's useful — just reach out.

One thing I'd add: celebrate small wins publicly. When a resistant tech completes their first fully digital job, make sure their supervisor acknowledges it. We want to build positive associations with the new workflow.

Happy to connect you directly with a customer in your industry who's been through this recently if helpful — just let me know!

so basically what i did was i made a bet with my supervisor that i could go two weeks without touching paper and if i won he bought lunch for the whole crew and if i lost i bought and honestly i think that helped more than the actual training because once i started using it i realized like oh this actually is faster for looking up customer history and now i just use it for everything but the competitive thing got me over the initial hump where i was just annoyed about having to learn something new

also pro tip the offline mode is a lifesaver in basements and rural areas don't let anyone tell you it doesn't work

Thanks so much everyone for sharing! We're about to start our rollout too and this is all incredibly helpful.

I have a quick follow-up — for those of you who did the "champion" approach with a respected skeptic, how did you identify who to pick? Was it just seniority or something else? And did you have backup plans if that person stayed resistant?

Really appreciate all the insights!

Good question — for us it was less about formal seniority and more about who other techs actually listened to when the radio got quiet. There's usually one or two people whose opinion carries weight even if they don't have the title. Watch who gets asked for advice on tricky jobs.

Backup plan: if he had stayed resistant, I was going to pivot to his closest work partner (they always got paired together). Same credibility transfer, just one degree removed. Didn't end up needing it though.