Podium reviews

Love it but don't always love paying for it!

Opmerkingen: Overall, it's really good. I'm a big fan of feeling valued as a customer, and I don't feel valued, I feel like a number. I rarely get check-ins from the company. On top of that, I think the ability to get reviews could be a little better. Our customers just don't really react when we ask them for the review. They are always willing, but then seem to have some difficulty completing the process.

Pluspunten:

The ease of use is great, I love taking the conversation from the website to texting, and it's great for that. It also makes it pretty easy to request reviews, and so that is great.

Minpunten:

It feels really expensive to me. At this point I might be able to get similar functionality for significantly less money, but nonetheless, because we've made the investment in it and trained our team on it, I selfishly don't want to have to deplore another program and do another batch of training.

Wish we never left!

Opmerkingen: We previously used Podium and we switched to a less expensive option. Well, you get what you pay for. Podium is a far better product. Reviews increase, we get paid faster using card readers or text to pay. Excellent customer service!

Pluspunten:

Podium works so well. Easy to communicate with customers, request reviews and get payments either at the jobsite or from the office.

Minpunten:

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Disappointed In This Company And Software

Opmerkingen: Signup featured a lot of great support and follow up but that disappeared a few months into our year long contract. For the price we were paying it's embarrassing that their customer support and our rep we hadn't heard for the last 6 months. Had brought countless questions and issues I was noticing with the platform on missing leads and review requests not reaching the targeted inbox but was never followed up on. Had also mentioned a mapped field being missed and reviews were being sent to the correct number and was told they were waiting on another company to finish an API...strange how I switched to a competitor and it works flawlessly. Save yourself the money and find the competitors out there that offer the exact same product for 1/10th the price. The UX may not be as great as Podium but the delivery rates are much better which is leading to us having more leads (and ultimately sales) to our dealership.

Pluspunten:

The product is easy to use and the UX is top notch. While I wish there was a few more customizable options from team management it is easy to use even for people who aren't tech savvy.

Minpunten:

The marriage with Podium was good at the start but absolutely TERRIBLE when it ended. The software does its job when it works but I began to notice that over time SMS review requests were no longer being received. Had numerous clients and friends who should have received the auto generated review request but it never hit their inbox. I began to question the validity of Podiums claims and asked numerous times if they could provide an actual report on sends and fails which they never did. While this may not necessarily be a Podium issue (maybe a Twilio one) the lack of support and concern to fix this problem was non existent. The front end facing of the platform looks sharp but don't let that fool you as there seems to be more issues in the back end with send and receive rates and we missed out on A LOT of reviews along with leads.

More interested in getting paid

Opmerkingen: Not great. I’m sure it’s the right fit for a large company with deep pockets and the need for a bunch of bells and whistles, but we are not that.

Pluspunten:

I chose the platform because I thought it was the only real option to replace ZipWhip which ends service in December. They were listed as a recommended vendor.

Minpunten:

The people. They started out great, but at the onset I told them that most of the features they offered we wouldn’t use. And they didn’t have a Chrome extension, which we used a lot. But we needed a new text service as ours was going away. The cost was about 3x what I was paying and that was for the lowest level of service and they lock you in to a contract for a year. But I didn’t know of another option.I found Text Request, which is almost ZipWhip exactly, less than 48 hours after I signed their contract. I was transparent with them about Text Request really meeting our needs and price point perfectly and we weren’t paying for a bunch of features we wouldn’t use just to get texting. I asked to cancel before we even onboarded. They declined and said someone from legal would reach out. No one from legal reached out. They offered to move me to a more basic plan with a lower price point which, as I felt locked in, was willing to look at after I got back from vacation. Upon my return from vacation I reached out twice but that was the last I heard from [sensitive content hidden]. Out of the blue I got an email from another person at Podium cancelling my account. It just felt like a yucky experience overall. It felt like they are more interested in getting paid than making sure the platform is the right fit for their customers.

Podium Rocks & The Product Works

Opmerkingen: They are amazing and I am looking forward to see where the product will go in the future.

Pluspunten:

It is easy to use, easy to train people, and it works to get customer reviews in the right place on the internet. Google reviews are king and the Podium works great with Google Reviews.

Minpunten:

The customer support could be better and more knowledgeable. The company is growing fast and they have a lot of new people who do not know the product.

Podium Review

Opmerkingen: In less than 1 month, Podium has helped grow communications with customers and provided positive feedback for the business. It is the only program that has helped grow the positive reviews in my workplace.

Pluspunten:

Podium is a great and effective program that allows you to effectively communicate with customers, receive feedback from them, and get reports on your communication. I would highly recommend it to anyone in customer service.

Minpunten:

I have not used the program long enough to have anything I really dislike. From what I have seen, I already like it more than the program I switched from!

review

Pluspunten:

The review invite and it's simplicity have helped increase patient reviews. The inbox is easy to manage

Minpunten:

If we enter a contacts phone number incorrectly, it can't be edited...only the name. That is annoying. The biggest issue and disappointment is we feel mislead as we were told when sold the software that it would integrate with our CMS system only to find out it doesn't and there has been no attempt to rectify this. In fact I was told to contact Symplast myself. I don't understand why I as the customer should be doing the leg work on this.

Interesting mesh of a review and communication service

Opmerkingen: Originally, I was looking for a reputation management service, but turns out, that's our least used feature for Podium. Instead, we've really been using Podium as a communication tool for our loan officers and new leads. I like that everything is done through SMS and allows our LOs to call the lead right away.
Our business is closed mainly through phone, so Podium works well for us. However, I don't recommend for all industries.

Pluspunten:

-Chats with customers are through texts -Different sales agents can answer, and there is no limit to how many sales agents are allowed on 1 account

Minpunten:

-Does not integrate to our CRM tool (Hubspot) -Not really using the review portion of Podium -No automatic chatbot integration

eliminates wait time for your customers

Pluspunten:

we can immediately take care of a customers concerns/questions in real time

Minpunten:

pushing leads to crm is a little slow but thats nitpicking

Ensuring only the best reviews of your business are published online

Pluspunten:

From the Podium dashboard, you are able to connect with your past customers via email or text to prequalify their experience with your business was good prior to sending them a link to leave a review.

Minpunten:

Pricing. It is much more expensive than other similar services. You may only want to use podium for one specific feature and have to pay for an annual plan that includes features you don't need.

Poor Service, Under-Developed software. Below average Support. Steer clear

Opmerkingen: If I could give a negative star I would, I have had some help here and there and a few months credit given to me to help ease the pain. In all honesty I Dont see it being good or useful for any companies with less than 10 employees.

Pluspunten:

The SMS service, But hey we all have phone anyhow.!

Minpunten:

Everything, The after sales service and support is shocking, The app doesn't always work, leads dont always come through costing me $ and hurting my reputation. I find it faster and easier to just use social media.

Podium is an absolute small business must have!!

Opmerkingen: Our company's customer service has far exceeded expectations since implementing Podium. It has helped give our customers a way to reach us literally 24/7. It has helped get our company reviews up 1000%. It has also helped communications between our employees.

Pluspunten:

Podium is AWESOME!! We use it daily to text with our customers who love to communicate via text messages. With every employee having it up throughout the day any one of us can quickly respond to our customers texts and if it's after hours you can set an automatic reply text message that says we are not open at this time so they know someone will get back with them ASAP. It makes it so much easier texting on the PC than on your phone and it uses your company's phone number so you can just tell your customers to call OR text our number. For those who do prefer using their phone to text, Podium has an app that is absolutely awesome too! You will get push notifications on your phone whenever a customer texts or notifications for anything else in the app. You can send customer links and photos easily with Podium. Another great tool is you can direct message or have group chats with your coworkers in Podium. Podium has helped us tremendously with our company reviews too!! Allowing us to set up templates that text our customers once their project is completed asking them to rate us on a scale of 1-10 and texting them links to where they can leave a review online if they wish too. I know Podium also has a function where you can send an invoice amount text to your customers and have them pay via that link but we have not used this feature yet. Podium is awesome and has definitely made operations A LOT easier for our company.

Minpunten:

There isn't really anything we don't like about Podium!

Everything in one place

Opmerkingen: Have had a great experience. Set up and add-ons are easy. Easy to use.

Pluspunten:

One place, multiple platforms combine. Appointment Center Reps do not need to check multiple dashboards, log in to multiple sites. It is all very transparent who sent what, saw what, etc. There are sites that are cheaper but we like the simplicity of this one. We can text customers and employee, create templates for consistent messaging, request reviews, NPS, all in one place. We know there are additional products available such as payments on Podium that we choose not to use. There is more that can be done with it than we need.

Minpunten:

It is not the cheapest platform for what we are doing but it is comfortable and does a great job. Would be interested to see group, mass messaging, and schedule messaging.

A product that works.

Opmerkingen: The staff is great and very responsive. Really like the interface and ease of use of the system.

Pluspunten:

There’s a lot of companies out there that have products for our digits age but I’ve found one in Podium that is useful. I do all reputation management for the Automotive group I work for and it’s incredibly easy to manager because of Podium. I can connect with all customers from all my stores without needing to have multiple logins and with the easy of a click of a button to switch between stores. Lots of other benefits but this is the one I love most. We want to be in direct contact with all our customers and this tool makes it easy.

Minpunten:

I can’t really think of something I don’t like. The only thing I would think to improve it as a tool that would offer more to the customer is change from automated responses to Facebook messages to a team that handles incoming messages.

Lifesaver during covid

Opmerkingen: Podium has been essential for us staying efficient in covid times. It has allowed us to send our office employees home to work and still easily stay in contact. We get a much better response from our customer base now as opposed when we could only call them. It has become a large part of how we operate.

Pluspunten:

Current and potential customers have easier access to us, and we're able to reach a lot more people than we could previously with phone calls alone. Anyone can get the hang of it quickly and the design is user friendly. Any time we have questions customer service is available right away.

Minpunten:

There was one time that they updated the software in a way that did not benefit the specific way that we use it without asking us. We tried to work with it for a while, but after we let them know we weren't crazy about it they rolled us back to the previous version with no problems.

Awesome!

Opmerkingen: I enjoyed using Podium! It was very beneficial for our office needs

Pluspunten:

It was user friendly and targeted a different type of customer/patient. Texting is the new way of contacting or communicating with other people and responses were quicker and more accurate.

Minpunten:

The program was easy to use but it was hard to pinpoint exact lists when need be

Podium makes things easy.

Opmerkingen: While closed during COVID, our customers- existing and new ones- were able to contact us through Podium. They can text the store's phone number so I don't have to give them my personal cell number. It kept us in business when we were shut down.

Pluspunten:

I was hesitant to get Podium at first, thinking that the older staff I had would not use it or have a hard time with it. I was very pleased with the results after the first couple months. It easily integrated with our point of sale system and ALL of our staff used the link to request feedback from our customers. Simple to use!

Minpunten:

Every now and then we will get spam texts to Podium.

Great Service but Constant Turn-over in Account Management, Issues with Integration

Opmerkingen: We've had multiple customer experience issues that have caused frustration. Our account has been managed by at least four different people over time. This makes it challenging when issues do come up... we don't know who to reach out to. It can take days for a rep to respond to correct an issue. Additionally, it feels like an overpriced service since our integrations don't even work. No discount was provided after they couldn't integrate to our POS system which means we have to send out review requests manually. It's not ideal, wish they would compensate us for their limited functionality.

Pluspunten:

I appreciate the simplicity of it's functionality to reach customers directly and collect reviews.

Minpunten:

I dislike that the integration for the version of Profit that we operate is not functional. We have to send out reviews manually, which can be a hassle.

Podium - Does Not Live Up To The Hype of the Salespeople

Opmerkingen: It was extremely time-consuming to setup. It took me over 2 full weeks. There were problems every step of the way. I've worked for software companies in the past and I feel like I was BETA testing Podium. That's how many problems there were. Support reps were either foreign with little real knowledge of the platform, or young individuals in the USA who were quick to blow off problems without taking any real ownership in assisting me. Two days ago, two customers sent us payments via bank transfers. Two days later, we still don't have the funds in our bank account. Earlier today, a rep said he was escalating our problem but 12 hours later, still no word from anyone. Where is the money? It's thousands of dollars. Our customers are waiting for their services. They paid but we haven't received the funds. This is about as bad as things could be. Our company is screwed out of $7000 right now. Learn from me. Why take the risk with your business?

Pluspunten:

The promises that the salesrep made. That's what I liked best. Unfortunately, it didn't deliver.

Minpunten:

Horrendous customer support. Never heard from our assigned Account Executive. Most other tech support is done through webchat which involves employees in foreign countries who know little about the actual product. When I finally was able to schedule one-on-one tech support, the rep didn't seem to take my needs seriously.

We were pleased with Podium

Opmerkingen: We were pleased with the Podium texting feature that patients could communicate in this form and begin a chat from our website or on their own. This was the first time we implemented this feature to our office. Rarely did we need support from Podium but the customer care was great!

Pluspunten:

Being able to offer texting as an office feature for the first time was beneficial to our practice. Having a mobile app or being able to use it on the computer during office hours was beneficial.

Minpunten:

We wishes Podium offered more features during our time. However, podium opened the door to us for texting and became a huge impact in our office for the 1-2 years we had it.

Podium

Opmerkingen: Great decision for our orthodontic office.

Pluspunten:

We have integrated Podium to improve our communications with our orthodontic patients by offering texting, to facilitate potential patients to communicate with us through our website plugin and encourage patients to leave us a review on their experience at our office. This has worked really well for us, and we have reached a high level of patient reviews.

Minpunten:

There are other software that offer additional services including Podium's offerings included although they may be pricier and not work in Quebec. A few issues when Google review links give issues.

best product found at our trade show

Opmerkingen: We used to ask our clients to leave us a review, and they all said they would. Very few ever did. Since we got Podium, our reviews are through the roof. It makes it very easy our our clients to leave us a review.

Pluspunten:

I found it very easy to use and implement and very easy to train the sales associate to use

Minpunten:

some of the comments from Podium are not easily discernable by non techie sales associates. When a request is asked more than once the response from Podium is not easy to understand.

Great features But At A High Price

Opmerkingen: Positive, but left for lower price

Pluspunten:

Podium offers a great service and lots of wonderful features.

Minpunten:

They are priced significantly higher than their competitors. Further, be ready for the constant barrage of upselling.

A user-to-customer messaging platform for reviews that's hooked in with Google

Opmerkingen: None

Pluspunten:

Direct Google integration is definitely the biggest pro here. They also are focused on having staff message customers directly for reviews one-on-one. It won't work for everyone, just depends on the business model.

Minpunten:

Very limited functionality and visibility into your account. Right now, it's basically just a review solicitation platform via messaging and email. It's efficient at getting star ratings and reviews, but that's about it. If you're looking for surveys, look elsewhere. Also, when I was a customer, they didn't even have NPS Score. That's pretty basic. Reporting is very limited and it's hard to get an overview of your total account, only individual locations. Customization is little to none for both the dashboard and the actual campaigns. Oh, and it's crazy expensive. You're basically paying for the direct Google integration. Which is super nice and important, but still. I also had a very negative experience that was unique to me. I had very specific contract conditions that were not met and it was a very difficult and painful process to get rectified. I felt very misled by the company and lost any trust I had in them. It was very disappointing.

Functional platform when it works, but customer service is very poor.

Opmerkingen: It was good until I stumbled upon problems on their end, and they do not respond to these problems in a timely fashion. I hope they iron out their problems so I don't ever have to speak to anyone at Podium Customer Service. They very rarely respond in a timely fashion.

Pluspunten:

I like the ability to integrate my business landline number with SMS capability. It's easy to send text review links to customers.

Minpunten:

Customer service is horrific. Let me repeat--horrific! I rarely leave reviews but the inconveniences afford to me deserve a stern warning to others considering this platform. I am fairly tech savvy and a good problem solver. However, problems, server disconnects, software glitches occur from time-to-time, and customer service contacts cannot be reached, are unreliable, and human customer service is lacking!