Podium: Messaging App for Businesses
Updated September 28, 2022

Podium: Messaging App for Businesses

Christina Davis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Podium

I use Podium currently just to text customers, however, I'd like if we could use their phone service too (assuming you can call using your personal phone but under the podium #). I don't work on commission so I would prefer if customers weren't calling/texting my personal line after I clock out. With Podium, it's an app on my phone so I can still access text messages from customers at home if it is an emergency. I sell to customers who text in using our "chat system" on the website & it allows us to see what page the consumer was engaged on when they texted us. A lot of times we will get messages like "what is the price for this item?" & we can click the link shown in the chat to see what item they were looking at-it's really convenient! We have text lines for each of our locations, & although they all have a different phone #, on the business side we can see all messages from all locations at once & easily transfer them between locations since we do have two different types of stores with different merchandise, & a main location with the most inventory options in case someone texts into the incorrect location. You can see a leaderboard of all users & how many messages they have sent or how quickly they answered incoming messages which is super fun.
  • Texting customers
  • Reviews
  • Customer support
  • Quick access to incoming website inquiries & ability to reply just as fast
  • Has loading problems sometimes
  • Room for improvement: Be able to pin or star certain conversations to keep open for only the individual user who owns unless searched (max of 8 as not not clutter) to see to keep the open conversations among all users a bit clearer & separate pin/star function for the overall store for very important conversations (i.e. customer has a question that requires more experience-all users can see the question has been pinned for further investigation)
  • Room for improvement: Be able to see who has seen a message on mobile platform
  • Room for improvement: Some kind of indication/marker to all users on incoming, (first-time or webchat only) conversations that have not been answered within 45 mins- hour of operating hours
  • Making sales over the phone & sending payment links for those sales
  • Sending Review Invites
  • Setting appointments
  • Most payment links sent are paid within 6 minutes YTD
  • 85% of payment links sent YTD were paid
  • 86% of inbound leads YTD were from the webchat

Do you think Podium delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Podium's feature set?

Yes

Did Podium live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Podium go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Podium again?

Yes

Podium is very appropriate for answering website inquiries in real time, setting appointments with customers, or making a sale over the phone (you can also easily & safely send payment links & reminders for them if a customer does not pay right away). You can send out review invites as well as choose other like companies to compare review scores amongst weekly, monthly, & all time. Team members can make friendly competitions of who has sent out the most messages within a given period & employers can set goals & even rewards for sending out a certain number of review invites! When someone is out, a partner can easily jump in & read the prior conversation for context as well as any previous engagement that the customer made with the store as history is saved from the very first interaction & deleting a conversation is not so simple. It is not great for private conversations as all users can see all activity so you may want to make your customer aware (as well as periodically remind employees) that anything they send can be seen by the whole company!