Reputation Management with Identity Issues
What do you like best?
I like that Podium connects with our public review sites. I like that the review link walks a customer through the process of leaving a review without them ever having to go into a different place. I like that we have the option of sending either text or email. Text can be hard if you forget to ask if it is okay to send (text laws), so it is great to heave the email option for those you forget to ask. I like that we now have the option of automatically sending out invites instead of manually doing them (sometimes you just can't get employees to do it)!
What do you dislike?
I don't like that a simple reputation management service has morphed into more than we need - and they charge for it too! We just want to gain more public reviews...but no...Podium now wants to handle all our chats and text messages. Plus, they are really pushing their platform for mobile pay. Problem is, when you don't use them, they are still on the dashboard and it just confuses employees on what they should be looking at and what is not needed for them. Plus, the chat dashboard includes all conversations happening in the company, even those that are not yours. So, you can see an issue of someone feeling like they should take on a conversation when it really is someone else's. Oh...and support...when we had an issue come up, guess what, couldn't get help for what we needed because it was a Saturday. Didn't know that was still a thing. Maybe it was issue specific and needed a certain team, but management was not happy to hear that answer.
Recommendations to others considering the product:
See if you can communicate and set prices for only the aspects of Podium you want to use. Price has more than tripled since we first signed up and they must be able to cater to the needs of companies as they keep adding more pieces to their program.
What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?
The problem we had was digital storefront. We wanted our review counts and ratings to show that our organization was at least worth the opportunity of serving the customer. When we were full blown we went from 82 Google reviews to over 1000 in less than a year. We are now at about 3500. the highest ranking and highest review count of all companies in our city for our industry.
