When we started our Moveworks Journey, the only struggle that we had here internally was “what do we call it?” and “what does it look like?”. I probably spent a bit more time on these questions than I should have, resulting in a delay in go-live for us. However, it was important to me to not only create a fully functional resource for IT help, but to create a brand that would be able to span beyond just IT when the time came.
A lot of name ideas were tossed around internally and a few different avatar designs with the help of the Moveworks team. While they were all great, but I really struggled to decide on something that would stand out and could be a brand. I even considered a contest within IT at one point to find something. Since we had almost taken this task up to go-live, the runway got shorter and I was the one who had proposed bringing Moveworks into our environment, the name/avatar decision was left up to me by my leadership team. I finally had the epiphany that if “this was the hill my career was going to live/die on” (I now know that I was exaggerating it in my head) then I was going to use something that I thought was funny and a bit off the wall, unexpected, and memorable. As a result, Harold The Squatchbot was born.
The Moveworks implementation team was kind enough to indulge me one last time on an avatar creation. I asked the team to create a cartoon avatar of a Sasquatch wearing a turtleneck and glasses with some minor company branding. I provided some examples of Sasquatches, type of glasses, and company colors. The result was an immediate hit internally. I ended up naming it Harold (a more cultured variant of everyone's favorite Sasquatch, Harry from the Henry and the Hendersons).
Harold went live and it was a huge technical success but even more surprising was how much of a marketing success Harold was. We created him a fake linkedin profile on our internal SharePoint site and introduced him as ITs newest employee. Essentially, we treated Harold like he was a real member of the team. As a result, it was nominated to be apart of our year end IT video that is created and release to the entire IT department and company leadership team to celebrate the successful completion of the projects from the year.
This was where the brand of Harold took off to new heights. For the video, I wanted to mirror some of the older ESPN commercials with the various mascots from sports teams working in the ESPN office. I put together a costume to look as close as possible to the avatar that the Moveworks team had created. I presented the year to date metrics of Harolds impact as Harold taking a break from answering all the questions employees were asking to talk about his impact. It was a huge success that led to a few in person appearances as we had employees coming back into our offices for get together days off of the pandemic. Harold also made an appearance in our CTO’s year end video for the entire company hanging out at our corporate headquarters in the cafeteria having lunch, playing ping pong and having a diet coke with our VP of Infrastructure. As a result of these videos and appearances, we continued to see adoption grow as well as Harold become ingrained in the culture here.
We are currently in the process of purchasing Moveworks to add to Harold's capabilities, after which, I’m sure Harold will make another appearance. If anyone has a tandem bike in the Chicago Suburbs they wouldn't mind loaning out, let me know :)
I know that it will vary from company to company based on culture and avatar, but if you are able to bring your chatbot to life, in some form, I highly recommend the effort if you have people willing to participate. Not only is it a good team building exercise, but it's a fun and different way to drive adoption.
