Podium Reviews

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

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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!

Comments: 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!

Pros:

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

Cons:

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

I wouldn't use Podium if it was FREE

Pros:

I was lied to during onboarding and never told about the 1 yr contract until I read it for myself during the signing. They are not transparent and their customer service is the worst I've EVER experienced.

Cons:

They have a huge lack of transparancy. They are willing to lie to you to onboard and try to keep your business. They will make HUGE mistakes like porting away your personal number with NO accountability or concerns for your business. Wasted countless hours during set up and after trying use their platform all while being charged for services not used.

Great Way to Motivate team to get Reviews

Comments: I love that fact that you can motivate the salesman to get reviews done. Keeps track of who sent out the most and places them in 1-3 winnings.

Pros:

Great way to get Reviews with easy text and email links to send.

Cons:

That it is not free, would be the only thing that I didn't like.

podium, one mans trash is another's treasure

Comments: it wasn't bad honestly! It's a super great program and they have some amazing features. However, for our company, it just didn't fit as well. For companies larger and using more payment methods, this is the program for you and it's very easy to use daily.

Pros:

Easy to navigate and gets the job done fairly quickly

Cons:

Not as efficient at getting our messages to patients

Inadequate software support to what was proposed

Comments: The multiple challenges with getting this service on line, and the expectation to pay for the full year payment without the service being full filled in our contract. They did provide one less month payment , but that was not even close to many months with no proper service. We would have stayed through this trouble if they would have off set the many months of no full support, but they seem concerned with getting one more payment for us> I will keep reviewing and posting until I see podium doing a deep dive and understand from our point of view

Pros:

The data analysis is easy to use and operate

Cons:

Continuous IT tickets that had months with inadequate service. The lack of communication when the system was not working properly but yet still taking our payments. I have multiple documents and IT tickets to support our challenges. This year cost with not the ability to get Google reviews made the experience a failure

Great Platfrom for Text Messaging, but for a VOIP, not reommended

Pros:

I like the platform for messaging to our clients. The text templates are customizable and easy to select. The interface is user friendly and very easy to navigate.

Cons:

Podium phones is the worst. I think it is fairly new system for Podium therefore there are kinks form them to fix. We had several outages, and it was the worst because our clients could not get ahold of us. Their support was not available 24/7 to address time sensitive issues. There explanations always had to do with changes in management so it took even longer for issues to be addressed and resolved. We are happy we switched to Kenect for messaging and Nextiva for VOIP.

Steer clear - you cannot get your information out!

Comments: Podium integrates with other systems, but only to bring contacts into Podium, it won't syncronise. After trying several ways, I spoke to support who were very hedgy and finally admitted that they account holders can request an export of their data and Podium review the requests "on a case-by-case basis". So you may or may not be able to get your data out, but only if you request it. I'm appalled.

Pros:

It's very easy to use although the way that contacts are entered and default to being unsubscribed is weird and not very intuitive.

Cons:

You can NOT get your contacts out. The only email marketing/CRM system that I've ever come across that does not allow users to export their own contacts.

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

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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

Cons:

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!

Enhances Customer Engagement

Comments: overall positive eperience, it's obvious their team genuinely wants to help businesses thrive.

Pros:

User friendly platform, easy to navigate, easy to connect with dcustomers and manage communications. The messaging function allows for real-time conversations that are personal and direct

Cons:

The anayltics dashboard is not very deep and there are times where i didnt receive alerts.

Good product, shady development

Comments: They do offer a great product, but due to their shady sales tactics, we chose to discontinue our partnership with them. Since discontinuing, they have continued to contact me and pitch me regularly despite our lack of interest.

Pros:

They offer a good product, and have a lot of services that are beneficial to a dealership.

Cons:

Their sales team is relentless and a little on the shady side. They call both my work phone and my cell phone constantly, and have even gone so far as to spoof a local area code to get me to answer my personal cell phone to pitch me on more products we don't want/need.

Disappointed In This Company And Software

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Great product but expensive

Comments: We used Podium for two years but found a less expensive alternative.

Pros:

Customers were able to leave a detailed review. Potential customers always do their research so real people's opinions matter.

Cons:

Very expensive. We loved the product but not the price.

Very good at what it does

Comments: Overall I'm very pleased with Podium. Despite the few shortcomings it alowed us to acheive our goals in a relatively short time frame and within budget.

Pros:

The ability to send Google review requests directly to customers via SMS was amazing. It was exactly what we needed to get our review score up to, and past, our target score within the space of only a few months. The interface is incredibly user friendly and managing teams is about as simple as it gets.

Cons:

I found that a lot of the time it wouldn't correctly tag who within our team was resposible for receiving reviews. There's also no ability to customise reports. It owuld be great if there could also be more integrations with additional review platforms, as we were stuck with only being able to provide the option for Google reviews as we don't accept Facebook Reviews. This caused us to miss a few reviews as customers didn't have Google accounts.

Overall Contentment of Podium

Pros:

+   Customers appreciate the payment features since they are simple to use.+ The Facebook integration makes it simple to turn messages into leads.+ It is simple to utilize for the entire crew here.

Cons:

- From an admin perspective, the mobile app is less enlightening than the browser version.- Monitoring conversations is frequently difficult because inboxes and where things end up are frequently confused.- Podium would be a one-stop shop if it offered document signature alternatives and surveying features.

Podium not worth the money

Comments: Not great and we were happy to get out of the contract.

Pros:

Introduced us to the potential of automating our review process. Helped with automating website conversations

Cons:

The customer service - no way to talk to a real person The price - to much for what it did

Great features But At A High Price

Comments: Positive, but left for lower price

Pros:

Podium offers a great service and lots of wonderful features.

Cons:

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

Good Software, lacking customer service

Comments: After my contract was up, I switched to Birdeye which was cheaper. Birdeye said I would get everything Podium offered for $100 per month less. Well, I didn't get the competitive they promised me, but I love their automated posts for a 4 star and above rating.

Pros:

I liked the ease of templates and that it works with lots of CRMs

Cons:

Customer service. Had lots of issues that took forever because customer service was so bad.

This company is a scam!

Comments: Absolutely the worst experience I’ve ever done with any company in my 15 years of business.

Pros:

There’s absolutely no produce company. Other than the fact that they’re very good liars. They con you into signing up under false pretenses. They have zero communication. The only reason they have good reviews is because you can’t write -ones on any other social media accounts and I’d like to know where the reading five star reviews on Google when there’s no Google review to be found.

Cons:

Yes, they are absolutely a con! They lied and misrepresented their business and strategies to me overcharged me. I had to dispute with my credit card company through several months, and now I’m being harassed by them for an outstanding bill of a month and a half of service that I never received. I’ve requested to speak to people and above positions with no luck and now I’m gonna have to have my attorney get involved. Do not do any business with this company.

Quality platform, but with a cost

Comments: Quality of platform was good, level of customer service / support was good, although somewhat scattered . There were few issues with the functionality of the platform, but it did take a bit to get answers at times and it also felt like once we started to question the cost of the platform that there was a certain assumption were going to be gone, rather than presenting a collaborative environment to look at creating a package that would keep us on board.

Pros:

The platform works well and there are some specific features that others do not have employed, such as the ability for the platform to identify landlines in advance when attempting to initiate SMS messaging, whereas others simply allow the message to go out and you wait for the failure..

Cons:

The least desirable component of this platform is cost, especially if you happen to be looking at it as a platform to deploy for use with multiple locations. We were a 2 store implementation, so higher cost, but not large enough for volume pricing leverage. the interface for synchronizing contact database information was not overly straightforward.

podium review

Comments: Overall i think Podium is a great app to use. Its very user friendly as well as reliable and has alot of useful features for small and big businesses.

Pros:

Podium is very easy to use and access, especially via the convenient app. we personally really like the ease of sending out review links as well as how hassle free the payment processing is.

Cons:

The app has alot of features and even options for different users on the same app, however it can sometimes get confusing when trying to switch profiles.

Medicore product, over promised and under delivered

Comments: Terrible customer service and sales team.

Pros:

Not much, the automation was nice, that was about it.

Cons:

The constant phone calls from different sales specialists that are trying to sell you services. BRUTAL for anyone who employs podium.

Great Product/ Pricing is high

Pros:

Loved the fact that I could email and text on the same screen.

Cons:

The price, we had to switch due to cost savings and response from support

Big fan of this software!

Pros:

Podium has made it easy to get in touch with clients in a non-threatening way that can be easily responded to in the time a client has available.

Cons:

There are updates often that change the layout and can make it difficult to navigate while getting used to the new layout.

Very expensive but worth it depending on your model

Comments: Fantastic, We collect customer payments via the text payment feature. It is expensive but allows us to reach our clients and accept payments the way that they want to and in a secure way.

Pros:

It is always on the forefront of new technology and they will keep you up to date on when new features come out as well as sometimes let you beta test.

Cons:

It is extremely expensive for what it is. The personnel also don't coordinate very well so often you will get a marketing solicitation call and email even though you already use the product.