Change management case study
Tool Migration: From Zoom to Google Meet
A phased change communications strategy for a 1,300+ person company navigating a tool consolidation with known capability gaps and a hard contract end date.
- Company
- Thumbtack
- Scope
- 1,300+ employees
- My role
- Strategy and full execution
The situation
Thumbtack has used Zoom for a decade. When the decision was made to consolidate video conferencing into Google Meet, we recognized this as a behavior change. Employees had ten years of muscle memory, and while Meet is similar, it's not a one-to-one swap. There was also a manual ask that many tool migrations don't incur: migrating every repeating meeting to a new video link. Building in time for the manual ask and getting people excited about the change was the major challenge.
The strategic decision
The most important call I made early was to be transparent about the capability gaps up front. I wasn't convincing people that Meet was better than Zoom overall, but better for our tool stack and aligned with the tools we were already using every day. I also acknowledged the change fatigue employees were experiencing, which meant being intentional about timing and not treating this like just another tool rollout.
The channel plan
- Eight weeks prior: Intranet resource page live. One source of truth before any broader announcement.
- Six weeks prior: Official company-wide rollout. Calendar default switches to Google Meet.
- Two weeks prior: Meet Migration Week. Focused adoption push with manager enablement and IT office hours.
- Go-live: Zoom access turns off. Full adoption required.
- Four weeks post go-live: Zoom contract ends. Migration complete.
What I built
Dedicated intranet pages serve as the single source of truth. Newsletter entries keep the migration visible in the weekly send. Manager-specific guidance gives people leads the talking points they need. The Meet Migration Week activation creates a focused adoption push. I also built a 30-day post-launch sentiment touchpoint into the plan.
Success metrics
Admin Console adoption rate tracked by IT. Intranet page views as a proxy for self-service behavior. Successful migration of company-wide meetings to Meet. 30-day sentiment touchpoint to surface friction not captured in dashboards.
What I'd do differently
With a hard deadline in place, I'd be more intentional about protecting the calendar around this migration. Knowing employees were navigating other changes concurrently, spacing out competing initiatives would have reduced the change fatigue employees felt along the way.
The broader lesson
Change often fails because employees don't have the context or the time to adopt it. For this migration, we were also mindful of concurrent tooling changes across the company. Building in enough time and acknowledging that fatigue was part of the strategy.
The most important call I made early was to be transparent about the capability gaps up front.