Who we are
We’ve spent over 18 years on the market helping travel companies use our products and custom software development services to improve their offerings. Our team is around 200+ people. During the pandemic our team moved to WFH. Needless to say, this caused some difficulties with team communication.
What team messengers we used before
Business communication underpins almost every aspect of your day-to-day operations. From leadership to staff training, project collaboration to resource management, there are few activities that don’t rely on the successful sharing of information and ideas. All our communications were conducted in different messengers, depending on the goals and objectives.
We mostly used Slack
Skype, phone or live communication were good enough for some urgent things. The main benefits of Slack were its user-friendly interface and the simplicity: we could use it to solve some urgent issues, save time thanks to various integrations and, of course, read some not very important stuff in other channels. The integrations helped us save time and structure our work. But it was time to say goodbye: we thought about changing platforms.
Why we used Slack and what we didn't like about it
The main problem with Slack is its cost for storing history and files. The pandemic moved all communication online. There was a lack of ability to structure channels to separate the important from the secondary. Hashtags are great but they don’t create bona fide structure. Endless notifications disturb you and prevent you from concentrating on high priority tasks. At one point it seemed like we had to put up with it and there was no other way.
As it usually happens, one of my colleagues suggested that we try switching to Leverice, a free Slack alternative. We decided to test it with one of our departments. In general Slack and Leverice offered similar basic functionality so there were no particular problems. Another benefit of using Leverice is unlimited messaging history. We’ve also now got clear channel structure in Leverice. It helped us avoid #chaos and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.
How it helped us
Leverice helped us avoid the chaos in messaging and save time by reading only necessary subchannels. The platform is new so it’s really interesting and important for them to get feedback from us. All of our feedback has been taken into account and suggestions are refined over time.
While Slack may be a leader among team messengers, it was good to find a unique alternative with features and structuring that no other messengers offer.