Jerome’s Furniture is a 16-location furniture store in southern California, who has been growing consistently. They reached out to Podium when they started to realize they needed more good reviews. Jeff MacGurn, Vice President of Digital for Jerome’s Furniture, says, “Jerome’s wanted to find a way for people to easily share their positive feedback with other potential customers, get insight into their business quickly and efficiently, as well as offer easy customer communication via text messaging.”
“People don’t look at their emails very often,” MacGurn said, “but people read every single text that they get. Texting gets the job done, and we have seen our customers engage with texts way more than emails.” Not only does MacGurn feel that the Podium platform eliminates communication barriers, but that the review aspect of Podium motivates the Jerome’s team to give a better customer experience.
“The coolest part about the review aspect of Podium is that people are leaving positive reviews about specific employees,” MacGurn said. “Not only have we received more business because of all the reviews we have received via Podium, but we’ve also seen a change in motivation on our sales team, they want customers coming in asking for them. It is an easy way for our sales team to get motivated to go above and beyond.”
EASY FOR CUSTOMERS TO REACH OUT
Although MacGurn and the Jerome’s team has seen the positive effects of using text message to communicate with customers. “Customers reach out to you in so many different ways, and texting is just another way that they can do that,” MacGurn said. “Our furniture sales people aren’t typically in front of a computer, so email isn’t nearly as effective as text messaging. Our store managers and customer service team wants to respond to messages quickly. Texting allows that convenience for our team and the consumer.”
Jerome’s always has someone in Podium either responding to reviews or using the messaging application. “There are so many use cases for the Messaging Platform,” MacGurn said. “We can use it for nearly everything, we can use it to follow up on delivery, we can use it to give estimated times of delivery. It has helped to make the customer experience a lot simpler.”
HOW TO START TEXTING CUSTOMERS
MacGurn starts out by using Podium’s text messaging functionality to send out a review invite. After that, when customers respond via text message to the review they can use Podium to communicate and help answer customer questions through that message.
“I was shocked how much we could do with Podium,” Macgurn said. “Honestly, I had no idea that we could text and see reports and so many other things. We originally bought Podium for the reviews, but it has been so much more than that and has changed the way that we do business.”
Jerome’s customer success team is in charge of responding to the messages within Messaging Platform. “We often get questions like ‘hey there is a problem with my delivery’, or ‘where is the delivery truck?,’” MacGurn said. “But Podium’s Messaging Platform gives us the ability to respond quickly and easily.”
WHY PODIUM?
Podium Messaging Platform has allowed business to flow more easily for Jerome’s Furniture. “Podium is worth every dollar you spend on it,” MacGurn said. “It lowers all communication barriers and allows us to better communicate with our customers in the way that they want to be communicated with. If you want to be successful, buy Podium. Texting is how people communicate in this day and age. And text messages are by far the most effective in reaching customers.”
