Podium gets results and boosts our online reputation
November 14, 2017
Podium gets results and boosts our online reputation
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Podium
Podium is used by the sales departments of all six dealership locations within our auto group. In the automotive retail business dealerships which choose not to ask all of their customers to review them online end up misrepresented with a larger share of their upset customers using review sites as a forum to vent or leverage the dealership's reputation against them to get something they want; while a relatively small percent of happy customers don't think to write a review. Podium gives our salespeople an easy and effective tool to ask every customer to write a review so that car shoppers who read reviews as part of their online research will get a more balanced and accurate feel for the experience they can expect to have when they come in.
- Podium is intuitive and easy to use. All the dealership employee has to do is open an app, enter in the customer's name and cell phone number, and hit 'send'. Simplicity and ease of use translate into greater buy-in and utilization.
- From a consumer's perspective Podium makes it really easy to write a review. It gives the customer the option to write a review on any number of review sites determined/provided by the dealership. When they select the review site they wish to post on, the customer is taken directly to the page where they can give a star rating and write about their experience.
- From an administrative perspective, it is very easy to set up and manager new users, manage which review sites are listed, and view helpful reports.
- If Podium could find a way to report back from Google and other review sites when a user referred to that review site by Podium actually posted a review and tie those reviews to the person who sent the invite to the customer, that would help to add another layer of accountability and recognition to salespeople who are following the process.
- I'd like to see Podium add a service where they respond to positive reviews on behalf of the dealership and provide suggested responses to bad reviews which the dealer could accept, reject, or edit and post.
- Another functionality that could improve the Podium product would be a tie-in to social media. A way to share reviews on Facebook, invite the customer to follow up on social media, and perhaps even a way to take a picture of the customer with their new car and post it to our page.
- 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.
We use Digital Air Strike at our two GM dealerships because it is one of a small list of reputation management companies authorized by GM as part of their SFE program. Digital Air Strike surveys our customers and invites them to write a review about our dealership. It is not as effective or flexible as Podium so we have been using Podium at those dealerships alongside Digital Air Strike. We also recently started a trial use of ReplyPro which is a service that monitors review sites and writes customized responses to positive reviews and suggested responses to negative reviews. I'd like to see Podium add this as part of their service so we can consolidate 3rd party vendors and manage every aspect of online reputation management from one place.