We have evaluated multiple smaller companies that do not appear on TrustRadius including Swell, Yext, Solutions by Text, and ReviewInc. We currently utilize Podium for its integrations with our point of sale system and the fact that they have negotiated the cheapest rate on …
Podium is well suited if your business needs are mindless Google Business reviews, and not much else. It's NOT appropriate for clients in the real estate industry. It's NOT appropriate for anyone needing a reliable VoIP solution. It should NOT be marketed as a VoIP product, b/c I found it fails MISERABLY in this regard.
STORIS is a great solution for all aspects of a retail furniture store. It is well suited to incorporate modern technology for better communication with customers and vendors. We also use the STORIS website module to advertise our business, and it synchronizes data from our inventory module enabling automatic updates to the website. Transitioning from our previous software provider was a bit difficult because we were used to doing things differently for almost 35 years.
Maintains conversations indefinitely, so we are able to go back to confirm details from conversations.
Provides the ability for our company to have a 'team' messaging platform where we can communicate with one another via single person to a single person, groups where we can add/subtract members of the group... this is invaluable to our organization.
Until today(!), we could 'share' or forward a message to one another; oddly, that feature disappeared just today, so I'm hoping it's a glitch!
Account manager communications: I had been asking my Podium account manager for integration with our CRM tool for over 8 months before my account manager fell silent. After another 6 months, I proactively reached out only to find out that the integration had been in Beta for months and 8 other companies had already integrated. It was frustrating that my account manager did not remember a key request and make the Beta available to me the minute that it was open.
Again, Podium has been so wonderful in the year and a half we have been using it, we are able to integrate it with our CRM and use alot of the available features. The most helpful has been getting TONS of reviews on MULTIPLE sites through Podium!
While giving our clients the ability to leave a review was there, we had much worse results and got fewer reviews through the Podium portal than we did by sending our clients simple email requests, or simply having our service staff ask for a review while still on the clients' job sites.
This can be an overwhelming experience if you are new to point of sale software. There is a lot of information and decisions that have to be made as you set up this system. I highly recommend the in person training to get a better idea of the process. With that being said, this is the reason you want a system like this, it gives you the ability, control and support to build a system that meets your needs with the flexibility to make changes as you grow.
I have to send an email to get information. They have a chat system but I end up having to go through my rep for account questions. It was a little frustrating to not have a direct phone number to call with questions. I would like to see a helpline added.
To be completely candid, I have not used another review software other than Podium. I've worked here for just over 2 years, and our company had just started using Podium. Podium has been useful and successful for our team; therefore, there has not been any reason for me to search for a new company. We are happy with Podium
I don't think this company exist any more. But at the time we did an evaluation of the two companies to see which came out on top. At the end, it was clear that Storis was a much better transaction based system. It focused on functionality that would help you take care of your customer. The other focused more on reporting and executive level information.
Its easy to scale to different departments as needed. We initially began using it to solve one problem and as new features became available it was easy to scale this and include other departments who could benefit from its tools
Use of Podium has increased the star rating on various review sites for all of our dealerships using the product.
Use of Podium has increased the volume of new monthly positive reviews on various review sites for all of our dealerships.
While we can't measure the impact that positive reviews have on car shoppers, we know that it influences them and we believe that it is a factor for some people in making the decision to visit the dealership. Some customers have come in and said they read our reviews and wanted to give us a shot. Others have even asked for a specific salesperson who's name has come up in positive reviews, without having ever met or spoken with that salesperson.
STORIS has allowed us to continue to have excellent inventory control. We have always had virtually no problems with not-in-location merchandise, and we have maintained that level of accuracy with Storis.
We have improved efficiency by eliminating manual postings for certain receivables, payables, and sales information. We require less staff to handle the day to day processing.
We also use the optional module for delivery truck routing, which integrates well with the STORIS system.
The website integration with the STORIS system has enabled us to show products much easier than we did with our previous software solution & web host provider. There is no longer much manual updating required.
