Podium

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.

Podium helped moved us from 4.1 stars to 4.5 (Google)

Pros:

Easy to use and responsive - Podium made it easy for me to be personally responsive in our customer experience management.

Cons:

I found a competing product that uses single initial qualifying query to help screen potential problems and allowing me to respond and mitigate prior to the push to review - this is a more effective and compliant approach. Podium made the invite and it the negative review posted even before I had the opportunity to mitigate.

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.

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

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

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.

Passable software. Terrible management.

Comments: Product was okay but ultimately was not comprehensive enough to fit our needs for the price. Their client management was terrible with constant turnover and empty promises. It feels like they need to trap customers instead of providing a quality product at a price that would make me want to stay with them after 3 years. I can handle pricing disagreement but refuse to work with a dishonest company. It says something when you need to trap customers instead of having them want you like we do with our many other service providers.

Pros:

All in one interface, mostly seamless communication portal, partial functionality standalone app.

Cons:

Tried to trap us in contract - acknowledged cancellation and then proceeded to continue billing and pretend as if there was no cancellation. Ran through 5-6 “reps” consulting with their “team” who mostly promised fixes and then left the company before resolution.

You cannot export your own date. Missing features.

Pros:

I do not like much about Podium. The processing rates were pretty good.

Cons:

You cannot export your data. There are features missing from the software that are sold on the site and discussed in their support videos/tutorials. These are important for teams. This has been an awful experience. The product does not do what it says it will do. When I decided to cancel, they gave me the run-around. It took over three months for them to release my phone number ($1800), and now they are saying that I "automatically" signed up for an additional year. I would recommend that you find a better, more user-friendly solution. They are out there. Shame on you Podium.

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.

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.

If you aren't using Podium, what are you waiting for?

Comments: The podium has been instrumental in the overall growth of our company. From google reviews to sales, to collections, Podium has been part of the experience every step of the way. Also as we were growing Podium was also growing and their innovations consistently kept the fire in us to push ourselves beyond our own limits and become the paperless, and digital company that we are today :)

Pros:

What I like most about Podium is its ease of not only use but training anybody new. We are a growing company hiring annually now more and more and Podium is by far the easiest trained software that we use. It's not only self-efficient but training is clean, straight-forward, and it's beyond user-friendly.

Cons:

There are at this stage in the game a lot of add on's that you can certainly do with Podium. It goes from a very low cost to mid-range cost quickly as you realize you really do need and want all the bells and whistles that Podium can offer. It's not so much that it is a negative, but it does become a challenge sometimes when having to pitch a wonderful new feature of Podium to your decision-makers when the words "and it cost ---- extra" comes into play.

All In One Place!

Comments: I have really enjoyed using Podium and feel that it has been well worth the investment. We have looked at other forms of software that are similar but we continue to feel confident in Podium because of the variety of services that they offer. It has been awesome that our young tech savvy employees are comfortable with this software but that it is easy enough for our older employees to use as well. I am sure that we will continue to use podium for years to come!

Pros:

I love that all of our messaging either from different social media sites or from our own website comes to one location! It is really nice that all of our employees have access to this site and because of that, we are able to reply very quickly to messages that come in. I also like that our reviews show up here and we are able to respond to them through the Podium platform rather than needing to go to Google, Facebook, Yelp etc. to find the reviews.

Cons:

I wish that somehow we were able to consolidate the review notifications so that if we invite someone to review us on google and they write a review, we don't get two separate messages/notifications about it.

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.

Podium

Pros:

We used it daily to send out links to make leaving a review easier for our customers.

Cons:

Not being able to pin point exactly where the issues were coming from.

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.

Ensuring only the best reviews of your business are published online

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Hope they improve the product

Comments: Customer Service was unsupportive

Pros:

Tracking of leads and communication optins

Cons:

Good ideas but not up to the test. The product did not work and you at boxed in to a year contract and had to go up the chain of supervisors to get released.

Podium works great, but the cost was 3x's the competitors

Pros:

This works exactly as described, You can communicate from your website, request and receive reviews. Too you can send invoices that can be credited to your account. This came in handy for after hours reservations by text when we did not want to publish CC numbers.

Cons:

Negative was totally about the monthly cost. It was 3x that of the next competitor. Too, they required a 1 year contract which was too much committment.

Trapped by Auto-renew contract

Comments: The product is expensive. Works as expected. Customer Service is not great.

Pros:

We use it for communicating with our patients and our office.

Cons:

It is very expensive. I have had it for three years and found out that every year the contract auto renews. I am not stuck paying for NO customer service and constant sales calls for another 11 months. I wish I went with a company that still has a heart. The only way to talk to them is through reviews!

Podium is an absolute small business must have!!

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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

Great until you want to cancel it!

Comments: The experience was good but so far overshadowed by their lack of letting us cancel with proper notice that the entire experience is lost. Like an amazing meal with a crap server. All you remember was the final service and it is horrible.

Pros:

Mostly worked well and had pretty good interface with website for chat as well

Cons:

Tried to cancel this and was not allowed. Went through all kinds of hoops including a mandatory "screen share" by our account rep trying to keep us which made it worse. You CANNOT call or write in and cancel ever! They have their methods and basically won't let you out of a contract. We canceled ours finally after the screen share, the hard close from two different people to keep paying and then still got billed since they had our credit card. I would never recommend such a company. I have NEVER heard of someone NOT taking written notice well in advance to close a monthly contract. We did finally get it resolved to only pay an additional 9 days past when we asked for it to be closed, but its 9 days of our money. One of the poorest experiences i have had in 32 years of the retail business trying to cancel something. Mandatory screen share and hard sell to stay - Simply unbelievable

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.