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.

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.

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.

As explained, I have been a Podium customer for quite a while. My company actually dropped Podium for a hot minute and used a program called Swell. The employees and I complained so much about the glitch issues of Swell that our company returned to Podium. That's not to say Podium is "glitch-free," but it far outways the issues we had with Swell. I will note that something has changed with Podium's customer service. When I first began using Podium, the customer service chats almost felt like you were talking to a friendly developer, eager to help. Now the customer service help feels like I'm chatting with overworked, underpaid, and uninterested grumpy teenagers.

Podium is incredibly user-friendly. Our store has a wide range of computer knowledge--from advanced to those who struggle to find the back button. Podium has been a good fit for all levels.

I'm not a fan of pulling the photos from my photo album or seeing that the pictures I take through the app are stored in my phone's photo album. I take many photos of products for customers and am very busy, so I often forget that they are there. I've used Podium for so long that when I look back at my years of personal photos I still find a picture of some random product that I forgot to delete.

The overall experience has been great! The software is easy to use and easy to set up. They assign you a customer success agent and take you through about 12 weeks of training and check-ins to make sure you're good to go. We have loved it and recommend it all the time.

I love how Podium allows teams of employees from different departments to work together to answer customer questions and requests. One beautiful thing is they were able to port our regular phone number and turn it into a text-able number. So our landline number that all of our customers are familiar with has now become a texting number as well. We're able to tell our customers those beautiful words: "Just send us a text."

The only downside I see in Podium is the search feature. It is actually astounding how bad it is. You would think in this day and age a basic keyword search feature would be pretty standard. Not so in Podium. The only way to look up old conversations is remembering the name of the person you were chatting with. I'm honestly dismayed by it.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

-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

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

The ease of setup, the fast ability to train a team and get leads coming in through text, and allow templates to be setup to make it not a lot of time to integrate.

The cost is a few hundred per month for the features that we use in it, but it has been worth it in every penny. Needs to add a payment feature to delay customer payment till date of service, otherwise their new payment integration is great!

Podium was a great tool for us and it really change the landscape of how we interact with new and existing clients. Once we cancelled the service we kept getting billed from Podium. It took 2 billing cycles and a few calls to finally cancel. Overall it was awesome. We found a more robust cost effective solution for our company with Sinch MessageMedia.

Ease of deployment for our web chat box and google review management. This platform really helped our Sales team with response times with new and existing customers. Which in turn captured more business. Podium also made it really easy for new clients to leave us a google review.

We no longer using Podium due to price. We moved over to Sinch MessageMedia for all of our SMS and review needs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..

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.

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

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.

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.

Podium has really enhanced our online presence with customers. They're seemingly more willing to send a text-based message as opposed to calling. With the current COVID-climate, we've really seen an increase in messages forwarded via this service. It also allows our associates to more easily stay in touch with their clients, even if they're out-of-the-office.

Simply put, the ease of use. Podium allows us to communicate with our customers across various platforms, while being able to send pictures and forward hyperlinks. It's truly a versatile program that continues to serve us well.

There are the occasional glitches - infrequently, we won't receive email notifications of Podium inquiries. As we typically have the software up and running at all times, this sporadic issue can be minimized.

Being able to easily track and report the teams stats on sending/collecting reviews. Easy platform for our team and our customers.

What I like most about Podium is the ability to add each representative so that they can send out invites to the customers they speak to. I like this feature because as a Marketing Specialist, I'm not on the phone with customers - they are. They can easily plug in their phone number or email address and the customer will receive the invite! They simply click the link and leave us a review. It makes it easy for not just the team, but the customers as well. That is very important to us.

The inability to get access ALL analytical results on the dashboard. You get some of the info, but in order to look at everything, I have to generate different reports from the platform and look at it in a spreadsheet. This is probably the most annoying and inconvenient part of using this platform. It has the ability to filter and look at stats for some things and other things, its not there.

Overall positive because of the headway we have made on public reviews.

The cost is inexpensive and it really does help get reviews

As new additions and upgrades are coming, it feels like reviews has gone on the back burner. Like everything else is more important. In fact, when another dealer of ours signed up, the reviews shows up as an "add on" for invoicing when this used to be the focus. So, it has also gotten way more expensive over the years. Additions also seem to influence functionality of review aspect on dashboard and things "break" more often. Also, I think that support doesn't work weekends from when we had an issue and I had to call that I wash I got.

This has helped us immensely with capturing reviews as customers are leaving the store with their experience fresh in their minds!

In addition to being extremely easy to use and straightforward from a backend and frontend standpoint, this software is such an easy way to grow and manage our online reputation. I love that all I have to do (once my campaign is set up) is enter a phone number and hit "send"! It's way easier than asking our customers to leave reviews, and most of them actually do it.

There wasn't much that I didn't like about the software. The only thing worth mentioning is there are a few creative limitations when setting up your campaign. However, nothing that a few tweaks couldn't fix!

It helps with Sales staff monitoring in terms of training and improvement opportunities by observing responses and conversations with customer. Also, it does help to show others how to determine 'fake' contacts. It has allowed customers in needs of service for their communication devices in their homes while retail floor was closed to traffic. it seems to benefit those customers who prefer direct questions with too much formality allowing 'no nonsense' transactions.

Podium has been a great tool for our company. It's kept us connected with customers when especially during the recent weeks of floor traffic closure. It's easy to keep track of sales staff response time and information to verify timely responses as well as other opportunities to coach for improvement if needed. Very easy to use and based on feedback easy to set up.

I haven't found anything missing or in need of improvement at this time. I personally use it more for a monitoring of activity and rarely use it to actually respond to messages.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 a fantastic product and they’re doing it right. They make everything easy and make sure you understand all you can do with their software.

Podium is the best review software I’ve come across. They make it so easy to request, monitor and respond to reviews. We have it set up for review requests for texts and for Facebook reviews to come through. It helps keep reviews in one place and track. They also have the greatest customer service and are incredibly helpful.

Something I would like the least is the amount of time it has taken for us to set up a new branch. It’s been a week or two yet we’re having minor issues. It would be a major issue if our reps weren’t nice but they make it easy and we know they’re doing everything they can.

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.

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

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

Customer Service was unsupportive

Tracking of leads and communication optins

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.

I use Podium daily. It helps me organize customers, keep communication lines open, and allows me to communicate easily and effectively without the need to hand off my personal number. I've basically closed and completed deals using Podium! It's an invaluable tool.

I love using Podium for work texts! I don't have to hand out my personal phone number so I feel a lot safer. I also use this every day! Get out information, talk about appointments, arrange deals. I keep the app on my phone so I can take work home when I need to.

Learning some of the features, like "open" v "closed" conversations, and the minimalistic design used to mark a message as such, is small and not intuitive. Once I learned, however, it all made sense. Maybe a switch design or something similar would be more intuitive.

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.

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

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!