I’d like to re-frame the problem.
For some reason, people see this Chat feature as a +1 source of instant messaging. Instead, I’d suggest to primarily see it (at this stage) as a replacement for existing instant messaging platforms that don’t give a way to organize knowledge into searchable, collectively editable, categorizable, watchable threads.
In fact, Discourse Chats is capable of not just replacing an existing platform functionality wise, but also eliminating the old platform, thus decreasing the number of platforms you use, not increasing it.
So, for example, if you’ve been using Slack basic features (mostly simple chat), you just stop using it and start using Discourse Chat – now you have -1 platform to think about and to integrate with.
Same goes for Discord and other “heavy” chats. If you only ever used it for simple stuff, you’re now better off migrating to Discourse Chat and discarding the old platform. Not only will it decease the number of platforms you use, but it will also make your chat integrate with your forum / wiki / knowledge base / documentation / project management more tightly.
On the other hand, if you’ve been using Facebook Messenger that integrates tightly with Facebook, and you need that, why would you consider to start using Discourse Chats and thus adding one more source of instant messages? You should not until Discourse Chats can integrate with Facebook Messenger and let you use the latter through the former, i.e. without leaving the Discourse Chat.
Same goes for Telegram, Viber, and whatnot.
So my advice would be to re-frame the problem and to think about the Discourse Chat feature from a different prospective. It’s a great opportunity to start using less tools/platforms, not more of them. That’s how I’ve been thinking about it all time from the very first notion about the Chat feature from the Discourse team. And it’s actually very exciting.