Poison Drop
How Poison Drop, the country's leading jewelry department store, moved from Slack to Pachca
About the company
Hi! I'm Dmitry, COO at Poison Drop. We're the country's leading jewelry department store. Our catalog includes thousands of pieces from 200 designers around the world, from global brands to Russian artisans. We carefully curate our collections, keep up with fashion trends and offer exclusive pieces for every style.
Life before Pachca
Before Pachca, we used Slack, but at some point we couldn't renew our paid subscription and ended up on the free plan. We looked for an alternative and first chose Rocket Chat. But the switch was painful: the platform turned out to be heavy and laggy, with an unfamiliar interface and hard-to-reach support. Eventually we found a way to open a new workspace in Slack and went back.
Then we got a notice that Slack would block Russian companies for good, so we had to move fast. With such a tight deadline, we didn't consider other options and simply put our trust in Pachca. It was the right call.
The biggest discovery was that we could bring over our chat history. At first, not everyone on the team believed it. Some employees even recorded their important chats: they turned on screen recording and slowly scrolled through their conversations so they wouldn't lose information. But in the end, the transition was smooth: we moved everything to Pachca ahead of time, and Slack really did shut off 10 days after the scheduled date.
The moment we knew Pachca was the one
The most important thing for us was keeping all our automations. We definitely weren't ready to lose notifications about returns or our integrations with spreadsheets and trackers, since key operational processes run on them. Personal support also helped a lot. We always had a direct line to the Pachca team, and they helped us at every stage of the move.
How Pachca changed the way we communicate
What matters is that we didn't lose anything in the number or quality of core features. We also didn't run into any technical limitations and were able to keep improving our workflows and automations.
Cross-chat threads also caught on across the company: now we use them a lot to discuss narrow topics without creating extra chats. Personally, it was important to me to keep custom notification settings. That makes it much easier to keep a work-life balance, so pushes from work chats don't come in after 20:00 or on vacation.
Tips for switching
It's best to have the new app tested by the employees who rely on it most in their work. They don't have to be technical specialists. But with this approach, the test is sure to cover everything important, and you'll understand in advance how your workflows might change and how to adapt.
These employees can then become ambassadors for the new app inside the company and help colleagues get used to it. We also ran our communication with Pachca support through them. That cut stress levels significantly and made the transition smoother.
Most importantly, trust the solution you've chosen. In our case, all our workflows stayed intact and even got better, which proved the move was the right one.
