Hah, but I am the op :-) I didn't want it to come out negative. I don't think my critique is unsubstantial though. Essentially we switched Slack with Basecamp, which also offers a chat part, so you can replicate the same behavior, but it also offers other means to communicate. Slack in this case was just the chat tool we used, I think the problem is with chat as primary company communication, independent of vendor.