Palindrome
How the digital agency Palindrome moved from Telegram to Pachca. A story about structuring communication and rolling out cross-chat threads for 170 employees
About the company
I'm Vasily, internal communications manager at the digital agency Palindrome. Our team is about 170 people, and we focus on three main products: brand media, special projects and social media. Our clients include companies like Yandex, PIK, Alfa-Bank and others.
Life before Pachca
Since the agency was founded, all our communication ran through Telegram. But over time, keeping personal and work life apart got harder.
Sometimes we forgot to remove a departing employee from work chats, which is a clear risk of data leaks. Personally, I also didn't like that there were no employee profiles: some people had dogs instead of photos, and a random string of letters instead of their full name.
Before Pachca, we actively tested other team chat apps, like Rocket Chat. We even tried moving there, but people weren't ready for such a big change, and we went back to Telegram.
After a while, we picked up the search again and started planning a move to Slack. But we kept worrying that Slack might block Russian companies, so we decided to take a closer look at Russian alternatives.
The moment we knew Pachca was the one
When I found out about cross-chat threads. Of course, after Telegram, even regular threads feel like something new. But the cross-chat ones won me over: I'd never seen anything like them. I see them as Pachca's edge and a key tool for getting work done.
How Pachca changed the way we communicate
Chats got tidier, and people reply much faster. We now use threads regularly to keep chats clean and structure our conversations.
Every employee profile now follows the same format, so you can find the right colleague in two clicks. And we have far fewer mix-ups between people and dogs.
A fun detail: we use the "Guest" role for interns and create standalone threads for intern questions so they don't get lost in the flow of work.
When we moved to Pachca, we knew the product was still a work in progress and some features were missing. But we're giving Pachca the benefit of the doubt, and we can see that we're able to shape the roadmap and that the team listens to us.
Tips for making the switch
Most important: let employees know when the switch will happen and how to prepare. I recommend putting together a migration "matrix" in advance. Mine was a list of all the chats we were moving over from Telegram. In it, I also noted who would have access to each chat and what role they'd have.
Make sure to highlight all the benefits of a team chat app for your team, so you don't struggle later with people not understanding why you're moving and what for. A couple of days before the move, I recommend running an intro session for everyone and walking through all the features they'll need. It helps the team get up to speed faster and makes the move smoother.
