For David Lipovsky, a Product Manager at Trama, the signs were everywhere. Sighs from the legal team's corner of the office. Slack messages asking support for help with client communications. Hours spent by highly-paid lawyers struggling with issues the support team could easily resolve.

The company, specializing in international trademark services, had grown to the point where their communication setup—support team in Intercom, legal team in Gmail—was causing serious workflow problems. The two teams had no visibility into each other's conversations, leading to wasted time and frustrated employees.

"The issue was that legal team members often struggled in silence rather than reaching out," explains David. "And that took up a lot of their time. Sometimes it could be a simple issue, but it can also be something complex that could eat up hours."

Some on Gmail, some on Intercom

The trademark service operates as a digital platform with an in-house legal team that handles complex applications and registration assurance. Clients would come through the website, and if they had issues, the support team would handle them in Intercom. Once a task was pushed to the legal team, it became a legal service managed entirely in Gmail.

This separation created significant problems:

• Support had no visibility into legal team communications
• Legal team couldn't see support tickets or client history
• Support would lose track of conversations between Gmail and Intercom
• Some lawyers with tens of thousands of unmanaged emails in their inboxes
• Google Groups functioned as distribution lists, unnecessarily including people in conversations

The quest for a Gmail-like solution

When David started exploring solutions, he had one non-negotiable requirement: the new tool needed to integrate with Gmail, respecting the existing communication history.

"Everyone knew how to use Gmail," David explains. "The simplest factor is that everyone knew how to use it. We needed to avoid changing too much, while adding quality-of-life improvements."

After testing various options, including Crisp, David's CEO at the time, suggested checking out Missive based on another legal founder’s recommendation.

Navigating the email transition

The initial reaction from the legal team when introduced to Missive?

"They completely hated it," David recalls candidly.

The unfamiliar interface and slight differences in button placement seemed like insurmountable hurdles for the lawyers. David knew he needed a strategic approach to overcome this resistance.

His implementation strategy was methodical:

1. Personally test Missive for a week
2. Onboard the support team first, so they could later offer peer support to the legal team
3. Segment the legal team into groups based on enthusiasm for change
4. Create a "hard deadline" approach: finish all Intercom conversations by Friday, start using Missive on Monday
5. Conduct one-on-one calls with nearly everyone on the team

"I explained Missive as 'just like your Gmail, but with these extra features that will save you time'," David says. "That helped everybody to instead of having a negative outlook on the change, to hope for the best."

Beyond just implementing a tool

The transition to Missive became an opportunity to fix numerous communication inefficiencies:

• Eliminated Google Groups, stopping the practice of unnecessarily including people in conversations
• Fixed email hygiene for team members with tens of thousands of unmanaged emails
• Created comprehensive Notion documentation for common questions
• Implemented 223+ rules to automate workflows
• Set up out-of-office responses, tagging systems, and shared inboxes

David's role evolved from support to actively improving systems, testing and implementing new functionality that saved the team time.

The results: A transformed workflow

Two years after implementation, the sentiment has completely reversed.

"Most wouldn't switch Missive for anything else right now," David shares. "Once they realized how much time it saves them to do everything within one tool without context switching—it opened up a new time space for them."

Key benefits included:

• Complete visibility between support and legal teams
• Ability to tag colleagues directly within email conversations
• Integration with Asana for linking emails to legal cases
• Reduced burden on lawyers for routine communications
• Better organization with custom tags and labels
• Elimination of lost conversations between platforms

Milan, who left during the Intercom/Gmail days and returned to the company after the transition to Missive, shared the difference: "I came back to Missive and all of a sudden I stopped losing track of conversations. Everything became much more organized, and it was easier to see which emails are a priority, which I can get back to later, and which are part of specific projects."

The human factor

What stands out in this success story isn't just the technology, but the human approach to change management. David didn't just implement a new tool, he personally guided each team member through the transition, understood their workflows, and addressed their specific concerns.

For organizations struggling with similar communication challenges, especially those in more established and highly regulated industries, the lesson is clear: the right tool combined with thoughtful implementation can transform even the most entrenched work patterns.

That personal touch made all the difference in turning "we hate it" into "we wouldn't switch for anything else."