Unclaimed: Are you working at Podium?
Podium Reviews: 4.6/5 — Highly Rated
Podium is an all-in-one marketing and communication tool specifically built for local businesses that want to grow their business, connect with modern customers, and simplify operations. Podium's all-in-one inbox consolidates reputation management, website chat, marketing campaigns, and mobile payments into a single inbox that helps streamline outreach and campaigns efficiently.
| Capabilities |
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Compare Podium with other popular tools in the same category.
Ability to send messages to customers. That's about it!
Everything else: 1. Tech support is below the worst I've ever seen. 2. Price for what it is, it's outrageous! 3. If they use their own system to provide support to their customers, they will clearly see the lack of some basic functionality that is missing. 4. The fact they don't use their system for support and you have to sit in front of your computer waiting for more than 2hr for a motion to reply your question on web chat even tho, the chat says estimated wait time 5 minutes. 5. After the moron replies to you all he has to say is: our system doesn't do that but it's a good idea, and I'll pass your feedback to the team. If I got $1 for every time I hear that from one of the morons on support I'd have a life time subscription for Podium paying their insane $450/month fee and still have money to hire some to deal with their dumb support guys and save me the stress.
At this stage, almost non, it's causing me more problems than solution
Nothing, unless you are a person to person business where you can encourage the customer on the spot to review you, this platform does not work effectively
Almost everything. Once they get you in with their 90 day trial which is actually 30 days free and then 60 charged at a ridiculous rate of $200+ USD ($290/month AUD), they will neither help or assist you. You MUST cancel within the first 30 days or you will be in contract for 12 months ($2400 USD/year for reviews!!!) We cancelled and they were fine with it and then boom, charged. When contested that we were told by Billy that we would not be charged for the 90 days as they were running off a 99% success rate and therefore the product would speak for itself. When it failed to perform, Billy had no recollection of who I even was??? I find it quite daunting that a Google Review based software does not actually have a Google review platform for us all to review!!! That rings alarm bells. If you do further research you will also see ex employees stating that all these review are from them as staff member as they are forced to review the company. THEY ARE FAKE in the their product performance
They refuse to offer any help. I contested their payments to which they informed me they would be billing me YET again. Once i informed them and gave them zero authority, they billed our company instantly (3 minute later we got the invoice receipt). the price was also in USD and not AUD so we were charged an additional $90. When we contested, they miraculously went silent. they dont
Absolutely nothing. I guess you can credit the sales team. The whole business model is to have a sketchy sales team to get you to sign a annual contract.
Everything. There is nothing good about this company. BE WARNED. They falsify their own reviews and do not value their customers. Stay far far away, A buggy platform a the worst company I have ever experienced working with in my 10+ years running a business
I have learned the value of customer service, as well as the precursor to a pushy sales team that will not consider anything shorter than a 1 year contract.
Their demo I guess. It seemed good in theory, which is why we signed on but I am struggling to find any positives since we made that mistake. It might work if you have a millennial-only client base.
Oh where do I start.... a) Spent two weeks going back and forth with their technical support to actually get the link being sent out to work in the first place. It felt as though we were the only suckers dumb enough to pay for their only partly functioning software. We were sending from iPhones and Android, how is it possible their system couldn't function on the most common devices??? It turned out that there were TWO separate issues. b) Our client base skews heavily towards the retirement set, so we had to spend so much time hand-holding to get them through the review process, we didn't need Podium to send the link in the first place. c) Even with all that hand-holding, numerous review that we WATCHED clients post, never actually showed up on Facebook or Google.... and this was not just the old folks. Even 20/30-somethings had issues. d) Podium's text-based system unintentionally encourages busy people to simply text back their review. We had perfectly intelligent young businessmen who we had asked to write a review via Podium, which they would do but by texting it back rather than posting it because they didn't take the time to actually read the one line message. Which means we then have to either abandon their review or write them back and say, hey I know you're really busy but could you actually click on the link this time and do it again?
We were a new business, so we needed to make our way to the top of Google search results. As mentioned previously, Podium was of virtually zero use.
