+72%

Google Business Profile views

+120%

Website traffic from Google Business Profile

+44%

Clicks to call from Google Business Profile

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About S&R Insurance

Founded just 8 years ago, S&R Insurance serves a mix of consumers and commercial clients with property and casualty, home, and auto insurance products. Jon Spaugy, the co-founder and president with 32 years of experience in insurance, shared “as an owner, my role is to find tools for the office to help it grow.” Since May of 2019, S&R Insurance has used Podium to boost their online presence with customer reviews and create an easy and convenient way for customers to connect with staff through Webchat. With texting, Webchat, and a focused strategy for their Google Business Profile that includes collecting reviews, the S&R Insurance team has completely transformed how they find and collect new leads and communicate with prospects and customers.

The Challenge

Before Podium, S&R Insurance struggled with local marketing. Scattered tactics made it hard to grow the business and difficult to know what was working. A weak online presence made it hard to find new customers and there wasn’t a good way to communicate with prospects or customers on the website. Altogether, S&R Insurance faced the following challenges:

A local marketing plan that relied too heavily on in-person events

“Most of our marketing [consisted of] going out locally, dealing with our chamber of commerce, dealing with Kiwanis, Lion’s club, real estate agents, mortgage companies, and loan officers.” said Jon. “We were really drumming up business on our own, without any online support.” The inconsistent, in-person tactics made it difficult to scale any marketing efforts and to know which efforts they should prioritize for better results.

A weak online presence and reputation

“We didn’t really have an online presence,” said Jon. The business didn’t invest in any engagement or presence on Facebook, Google, or other platforms. “We had a website. We had Facebook. But we never really did anything with them or got any results from either of them.” Without the knowledge of how to grow the business online, growth was flat. Reviews weren’t a priority and the results reflected that. “I think we had five reviews on Google. We really needed something to change,” said Jon.

A poor website experience with no good way to connect to prospects

The website featured information about the business, but didn’t offer an easy way to get in touch with someone. A phone number was the only option listed as a next step. “People want to communicate through Webchat and we didn’t have that option on our website,” said Jon. Without Webchat, prospects were leaving the website and the business was losing potential customers.

The Podium Solution

With Podium, S&R Insurance built a thriving online customer experience and reputation. They implemented Webchat and added texting to improve customer communication. With these changes, they’ve seen a consistent increase in monthly leads, search rankings, and web traffic. More specifically, S&R Insurance uses Podium to deliver:

A shining online reputation, built one review at a time

With Podium, asking for reviews is easier for the staff. “Podium has been really easy for the staff to adopt. Now, it’s easy to request and collect reviews,” said Jon. Implementing a standard review ask has increased the quality and frequency of reviews. Plus, the business is responding to every negative review to see how they can turn it around and make the customer happy.

The review leaderboard in Podium has added friendly competition among the staff, motivating them to consistently ask for reviews. Now the team celebrates the wins together—when a customer posts a new review or a great lead mentions that they found them through a review.

Reviews have also helped S&R improve client retention. “We estimate that when a customer posts a review, we keep that client 3x longer than we would if they didn’t write a review,” said Jon. The team understands that if the customer takes the time to talk about how great S&R Insurance is online, they’re likely telling their friends and they’re going to be more loyal to the business.

A consistent increase in monthly leads, search rankings, and web traffic

Today, reviews and the S&R Insurance Google Business Profile are the best lead sources for the business. “Even though we still pay for leads through lead services and we’re working in the community, our best lead source is Google. And it’s all from reviews,” said Jon.

Now, customers call in asking to work with specific staff members that are mentioned in online reviews. Plus, the business has seen tremendous growth, even during the pandemic. “We’ve grown 30% during the pandemic, purely because of better reviews,” said Jon. The farthest reaching deal S&R Insurance has seen was from a business out of South Korea. “We got a call from a business in South Korea that was building a factory in our area. They said, ‘we’ve done our research, we’ve read your reviews. We want to do business with you.’ That was pretty incredible.”

Google Business Profile actions have also increased significantly. Clicks-to-call, directions to the business, and website visits have all been impacted by an influx of positive customer reviews. “The best business is referral business, period. We can’t generate that on our own. And today, referral business comes from reviews,” said Jon.

An easy lead management system with Webchat

Adding Webchat to the website has improved communication with prospects and customers immediately. And with real staff members engaging with people on Webchat, customers know they’re not speaking with a bot, which increases trust and improves the website experience.

“People start their search online and the ability to chat back and forth with them, to respond immediately—it’s a huge selling point,” said Jon. And when customers want to carry the conversation to the phone, it’s an easy transition to text or a phone call.

The process for Webchat has been so easy for the team to adopt, the ramp up time and the results were both quick. “When leads come through Webchat, it feels like a freebie to us,” said Jon.

A convenient communication experience with texting

Offering texting has also improved customer communication. “Texting has made it so easy to connect with customers, especially when we convert Webchat conversations to text messages,” said Jon. “It’s so easy to do.”

The convenience and ease-of-use of Webchat has also added to a great office environment. “Webchat makes it so easy to connect to leads, our office morale has really improved. Plus, it was so easy to learn. Everyone ramped up really fast.”

Results and ROI

Since May of 2019, S&R Insurance has used Podium to see results like:

→ More than 1,000 new reviews with an average of 20+ reviews per month

Podium has made collecting reviews easy and convenient—for both the staff and customers. And the results show the team’s success with more than 1,000 reviews collected, averaging 20+ reviews per month with an average star rating of 5.0.

→ More than 700+ Webchat leads in 1 year

Texting and Webchat are creating more opportunities for lead and customer conversations. The team has clock over 700 conversations in just one year, greatly improving the customer experience.

→ 120% increase in website traffic from Google

With more focus on their Google Business Profile with more reviews, the S&R Insurance team has seen direct results in website traffic, profile views, and clicks-to-call. Website traffic has increased by 120%, profile views are up by 72%, and clicks-to-call are up by 44%. Overall, a platform that was once ignored has become a significant source of new leads for the business.

→ 30% revenue growth during the pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the office saw an incredible 30% revenue growth. The growth is attributed to the influx of online reviews, the improved star rating, and the increase in traffic their Google Business Profile is sending to their website.

→ 3x longer retention for customers that leave a review

When a customer leaves a review, the team estimates they improve the retention of that customer by 3x. Asking for customer reviews not only brings in new customers, it improves current customer loyalty and brings in more revenue.

“The whole office believes in Podium. Your customers are your best testimonial for getting business, and your staff is your best testimonial that you chose the right product. I can’t imagine the office without Podium now. I think that’s a huge testament of how important it is to the agency.”

Podium can help your business too. Get started now.

10+

employee hours saved per week

<20 min

response time for all messages

1,700+

conversations in the last 12 months

<12 hours

average time to payment

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About Vineyard City

With more than 17,000 residents, Vineyard is a city in northern Utah County that’s growing quickly. It is one of the fastest growing cities in the Utah metropolitan area covering Salt Lake City to Provo, also known as Silicon Slopes.

A customer since 2021, Vineyard uses Podium to more easily connect with residents and businesses and consolidate all communications across numerous channels into a single inbox. The city is striving to create an engaged community and an excellent resident experience, and Podium is helping them do just that. Bethany Bee, the Social Media Coordinator for the city of Vineyard, explained, “We want an engaged community. This is why Podium helps. Before, it felt like we would push a lot of information out and we didn’t know if people were really listening. But with Podium, the biggest thing we see is community engagement and if our messages are landing.”

Kathryn Newman, the Communications Manager and assistant to the mayor, said, “A big message that we push to our employees is to give our residents the best customer service.” For many new homeowners, students at the local university, or other residents moving in for just a short time, interacting with a city is a new experience. “They’ve never had to interact with a city before and we’re just here to help them with whatever they need from the city,” said Kathryn.

Vineyard uses Podium Webchat to field more questions from residents in less time, Podium Payments to process payments for permits, business licensing, tickets to community events, and vendor payments, and texting to organize community events and communicate with vendors–even the sheriff’s office answers residents’ questions through text. “I think that two-way conversation just helps that community aspect. We want to feel very friendly, almost neighborly, like they can contact us with questions. And I think that helps, being able to text back and forth,” said Bethany Bee.

The Challenge

Before Podium, it was a challenge for the city of Vineyard to connect residents with the right city employees. Managing resident requests and questions was difficult internally with too many communication platforms and opportunities for human error. Plus, the process for collecting payments was manual and outdated—running credit cards at employee desks and waiting for checks in the mail. Altogether, Vineyard struggled with issues such as:

Communicating with city employees was difficult for residents. When residents had questions that needed quick answers, the process to get connected with a city employee was frustrating and it took too long. The city website had a variety of different phone numbers and contact information, making it difficult for residents to find the right department or individual. Some residents resorted to tagging the mayor in Facebook posts with questions. “Residents were going to our Facebook group, tagging the mayor, and asking for direct answers to questions they could so easily come to staff for instead,” said Kathryn.
Managing and responding to resident requests was cumbersome and time consuming. With a wide variety of communication platforms, it was becoming more difficult for the city to manage even simple communications with residents. Too often, a question would come in through a Facebook message and the city employee managing that inbox would need to text another employee in a different department or walk to another building to get the answer. Then they would have to go back to the resident’s question in the original Facebook message. “I would have to copy and paste information from 14 different messaging platforms. It felt like 500 steps to answer a question that I didn’t know [the answer to].” said Bethany Bee.
Collecting payments from residents and businesses was inconvenient and outdated. Before Podium, Vineyard was collecting payments through invoices or in-person transactions at the city offices. The in-person payments were run on an outdated system that didn’t offer the convenience or security of a card reader. “I wouldn’t want to hand someone my credit card. The way we accepted payments before wasn’t the way people are used to,” said Kathryn. Residents paying in person would have to write a check or hand over their credit card. City employees would then take the credit card back to their desk to run the transaction. The whole process felt outdated and unsecure.

The Podium Solution

With Podium, the city of Vineyard was able to streamline communication with residents, employees, and businesses while also modernizing the payment experience. Texting, card readers, and payment links have made working with the city easy and convenient. More specifically, Vineyard uses Podium to deliver:

A better way to connect with residents—through text
With Podium, Vineyard improved the resident experience with the added convenience of communicating through text. Now, residents can connect directly to city employees that can answer their questions as new conversations are assigned to the right expert. “We have a person from each team that is communicating with residents,” said Bethany Bee. “We have about 10 people that we are regularly farming out messages to internally.”

Texting has made it simple for residents and city employees to connect—without the added frustration of downloading another app or managing a new platform. “People are texters. They don’t want to make a phone call and sit through a menu. The text box is where they want to go and get an answer to their question,” said Kathryn. “Podium enables us to meet residents where they are and respond to them through their phones.”

A more convenient experience for employees and residents
Podium greatly simplified the internal communication and response time to resident inquiries. “We got Podium to make our former communication manager’s job easier and improve the response time for people’s questions,” said Kathryn. But when that employee left, they didn’t have to replace the position because they were already saving 10+ hours per week.

Now the team uses templates to quickly respond to frequently asked questions, helping employees get answers out even faster to new inquiries. “Canned answers are working really well for us. We can get a response out right away instead of referring the resident to one of our coworkers” said Kathryn.
A modernized, more secure payment process
With new card readers and text-to-pay options, processing payments is easier, faster, and more secure. And employees and residents aren’t the only ones happy with the change. Local businesses are seeing the benefits, too. “It’s helped our relationship with businesses,” said Bethany Bee. And Kathryn added, “It’s just quicker and easier. It’s what they’re used to.”

Plus, it’s easing the burden on the finance team. Bethany Bee is creating and sending out invoices in one easy step instead of waiting on invoices from finance and then payments from mailed checks or in-person transactions. “Permits, business licensing, special events, ticket sales—anything like that—the best way to do it is through Podium. We just send a payment link,” said Bethany.

Results and ROI

In just one year with Podium, the city of Vineyard, Utah has enjoyed results like:

→ Less than 12-hour time-to-payment

Card readers, text payment links, and a faster invoicing system have all made the payment process faster, more convenient, and more secure for employees, residents, and businesses. With Podium, time-to-payment is down to less than 12 hours. Previously, it may have taken days for a resident or business to visit the city office to make a payment.

→ Less than 20-minute response time for all messages

With all messages routed to a single inbox, it’s easier to assign questions to the right internal expert and get an answer back to residents and businesses quickly. Plus, with Webchat messages from Vineyard’s website being converted to text conversations, residents are easier to follow up with and they don’t have to wait by their computer for an answer from the city.

→ Saved 10+ employee hours per week

Finding answers to resident questions and then tracing that message back to Facebook or another platform was incredibly time consuming. With a faster process to connect residents to employees, the Vineyard team is saving more than 10 employee hours per week.

→ Managed 1,700+ conversations in the last 12 months

Since implementing Podium, the city of Vineyard has managed over 1,700 conversations with residents and businesses. With templates and automated routing, messages are seen, responded to, and managed quickly.

“With Podium, communication is more streamlined. We like to meet people where they are, and they’re on their phones.”

Podium can help your organization too. Try it for free today.

40+

SMS campaigns in 6 months

2-3x

higher open rates with SMS vs. e-mail

15%+

SMS campaign click rate

4,000+

SMS marketing subscribers in 6 months

< 3 minutes

average response time

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About Real Salt Lake

After their first game in 2005, Real Salt Lake (RSL)—an American professional soccer franchise, based in Salt Lake City, Utah—quickly became a household name, getting involved in the community and winning the hearts of local fans. The RSL team is focused on community involvement and always on the lookout for new opportunities to serve. The team often sends players to schools to motivate students and even into grocery stores to surprise shoppers with free groceries. “It’s great to know that we’re making an impact more than just playing games here at the stadium,” said Brady Ulloa, a Business Intelligence Manager at RSL. “We are out in the community and people know that Real Salt Lake is an organization that helps the community.”

Responsible for managing data, technology platforms, and moving the organization forward through digital transformation opportunities in marketing and sales, Brady started as a Fan Relations Representative for the RSL team. In his original role, Brady used Podium to send texts to season ticket holders. “I got familiar with Podium, but as my role developed, I saw that there was a lot more to Podium that we could use,” said Brady.

In his new role, Brady was tasked with solving a few challenges for the organization, such as creating easy and convenient ways to connect with customers and fans, routing messages internally, and boosting fan engagement with promotions. Podium offered the right solution.

The Challenge

Before Podium, Real Salt Lake struggled to streamline communication with fans and customers through email and on the website. Email open rates were low and frustration was high when fans visited the website without a clear process to connect with RSL staff.

Email wasn’t providing the right results. With an email database of 60,000 people and open rates around 8%, the team wasn’t getting the results they wanted. “The results didn’t show how many people are actually engaged in our product. They showed how little people are engaged with email,” said Brady.

No clear way to connect with a Real Salt Lake rep on the website. It was difficult for website visitors to easily contact someone at the RSL organization. The team wanted to remove barriers and create an easy way to start a conversation, directly from the website.

No convenient way to communicate with fans and customers. Each of the 7 departments within the organization—RSL, Real Monarchs, the team store, ticketing, premium tickets, fan relations, etc.—needed to connect with fans, attendees, and the local community. “Email wasn’t getting through to people,” said Brady. The team needed a dedicated communication channel for each department.

The Podium Solution

With Podium, the RSL team has found incredible success and increased convenience with customer communications. Texting and Webchat create personalized customer conversations that are easy to start and easy to route to the right person internally. More specifically, RSL uses Podium to deliver:

A better way to connect with fans—texting. “Everyone’s on their phone, why are we not texting people more?” said Brady. With Podium Campaigns, they were able to do just that. RSL uses text campaigns to send match day notifications, promote ticket and merchandise sales, and build their brand by showcasing community events and team updates–all leading to a more personalized experience for fans and increased fan engagement.

A faster way to connect with fans and improve lead generation. With Podium Webchat added to the website, the team can now better service customers with quick responses and easy answers to questions. “It’s super convenient that Webchat just pops up. That’s how we get a lot of traffic—people asking simple questions,” said Brady.

A more direct way to connect customers to the right department. With the addition of texting and a centralized inbox for all customer communication, the RSL team has created a single input for customer contact that can be easily (and automatically) routed to the right person internally. “To be able to have one number that I can text directly to RSL and get answers to any questions, that’s the biggest benefit,” explained Brady.

Each department can now connect with customers conveniently while elevating the brand as a modern, cutting edge business that is easy to work with and understands how fans like to communicate.

Results and ROI

In just one year of partnering with Podium, RSL has enjoyed results like:

→ Reduced average response time to <3 minutes for more than 5,000 conversations
With more than 5,000 Webchat leads on the website, the RSL team has lowered their average response time to under 3 minutes. Podium Webchat helps the team provide a timely response to both new and returning visitors that need to quickly reach out and ask a question.

→ Collected 4,114 text campaign subscribers in just 7 months

The RSL team started collecting text opt-ins to grow their text database after they implemented Podium. And the list grew to more than 4,000 customers in just 7 months!

→ Connected with customers in over 9,000 conversations in just 12 months

Combining both text conversations and Webchat messages, the RSL team has managed over 9,000 conversations in just 1 year. And those messages are providing real insights into what customers want to see in the future. “I’m excited to start seeing who clicked a link, for example on a season ticket promotion, and then be able to target those people with more season ticket deals,” said Brady.

→ Sent over 40 campaigns in 6 months with click rates as high as 30%

Even though their text subscriber database is smaller than their email database, the team is seeing incredible engagement. “We’re routinely getting 12 – 15% click rates,” said Brady. “And everyone sees the texts.” In just 6 months the team sent over 40 text campaigns and click rates on some campaigns were as high as 30%.

“The connection that Podium helps facilitate—that relationship between us and the fans–is the biggest driver of the success we’ve seen.”

Podium can help your business too. Start a free trial.

70%

of revenue now has text (SMS) involvement

300%

increase in revenue from in-game sales using a textable number

minutes response time during work hours

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The Utah Jazz membership and services team uses Podium to streamline communication with leads and clients through one-to-one text messaging, Webchat, and Payments. While the Jazz used to have a long sales cycle of lost emails and phone tag, they now provide an experience that’s more efficient, convenient, and engaging for both clients and sales reps. With Podium, the Utah Jazz team has seen incredible results. An estimated 70% of their sales now involve some level of texting, they’ve seen record-breaking revenue in a single game night using a textable number, and they’ve reduced their sales team’s response times to under five minutes. And, with a single inbox for all incoming messages and comprehensive reporting, the team has complete visibility into their most valuable asset–the customer experience.

About the Utah Jazz

The Utah Jazz—an American professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City, Utah—was founded in 1974 as an expansion team. The team moved from New Orleans to Salt Lake City in 1979. Well-known players include John Stockton, Karl Malone, Deron Williams, Donovan Mitchell, and Rudy Gobert. Seven Utah Jazz players are in the Hall of Fame and the team holds two conference titles—1997 and 1998—and nine division titles—from 1984 to 2017. All of the Utah Jazz home games are played in the Vivint Arena, boasting 18,603 seats. At the time of the case study, the Utah Jazz are ranked #1 (44 – 15) in the Western Conference and in their 2020 – 2021 season.

The Challenge

The Utah Jazz aren’t just leading the NBA’s Western Conference. They’re showing the sports world how professional teams can use technology to transform how they run their programs, pack their arenas, and stay in touch with fans.

Challenge #1: Limited inventory means they must find ways to maximize revenue

“It’s interesting working in sports where you have such a high payroll on the other side of the building,” Jeff Heaton, Director of Membership Sales & Service at the Utah Jazz, said. “We have a limited amount of inventory. There are 18,603 seats in the building. And so we’ve got to find ways to be creative in making sure we’re bringing value to our fans, but also maximizing the revenue that we can out of each one of those seats.”

Challenge #2: Ineffective and inefficient sales communication

Capitalizing on ticket sales at the right moments is a big part of maximizing revenue for the Jazz. Prior to Podium, in-game sales required fans to call a phone number displayed on the jumbotron. Meanwhile, in daily sales efforts, phone and email tactics were proving inefficient and ineffective.

“We’d get a couple of voicemails or a few people calling in every game. And maybe our rep that’s on the phones is busy, so he doesn’t get that call. It was turning the sales process into a couple of weeks,” explained Jeff.

If customers did call in to the number on the jumbotron, they were routed through a phone tree, adding friction into the buying process. Additionally, any time a customer was ready to make a payment, the sales team had to call them to run the payment through.

Challenge #3: Missed sales opportunities

The asynchronous nature of email and voicemail was causing the Jazz to miss these sales opportunities. Often, by the time they would get ahold of fans, the excitement of the game was over. A day, or maybe just an hour had passed, and so had that fan’s impulse to buy season tickets.

“The impulse part of it is so big for us. When Donovan is going off and Rudy’s doing his thing with blocks, people are like, ‘I need to get tickets.’ In that moment, they’re feeling that desire to buy another ticket,” said Cameron Coughlan, another Director of Membership Sales and Service for the Utah Jazz.

Challenge #4: Lack of visibility due to sales reps using personal phones to text

Stuck in longer-than-necessary sales cycles, lost emails, and phone tag, the sales organization at the Utah Jazz needed a platform to improve their communication with leads and existing clients. For decades they had relied on the consistency of sitting at a desk, answering incoming inquiries via phone, and sending follow up emails to interested leads.

The sales reps, recognizing that they needed a more personal, one-to-one communication strategy, turned to texting customers and leads from their own personal cell phones. And while the response was positive, the internal team had no way to track those conversations in their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

The Podium Solution

In 2020, the newly created Smith Entertainment Group purchased the Utah Jazz. With new management, the organization was ready to lead out in the league from a technology and customer experience standpoint. They partnered with Podium to help them achieve just that.

Podium Inbox

With SMS messaging through the Podium Inbox, the Utah Jazz have a more personalized, engaging customer experience with increased conversion rates. Customers are familiar with texting and sales reps are finding that clients are more direct with text messaging than they are on the phone. It’s saving the team valuable time as they streamline conversations. What once took 30 minutes is now resolved in two minutes via text.

“With texting, you get instant access that’s needed, but you also get a quick response back,” said Ty Wardle, Vice President of Membership Sales and Service for the Jazz. “People are more direct via text than they are on the phone. People shorten their conversations to exactly what they need and that saves so much time. A conversation that might take 30 minutes on the phone could take only 2 minutes via text. Texts create a lot of opportunities for us in that way.”

Podium Webchat

Before Webchat, if a customer wanted to make a ticket purchase, they would have to call or email or figure out another route to purchase a ticket. The general phone line, accessible from the main website, was the most popular way to purchase a ticket.

When customers dialed into the main phone number, it took multiple steps and five to ten minutes to get a human on the line. “In the past, customers had to take five steps to get an answer. And now, they can text in, and in one step, they get the answer they need,” said Cameron.

“Webchat has made everything more efficient,” said Cameron. “Not just for answering customer questions and not just for us on the phone side, but for clients getting the information they need.”

It’s so efficient, the team sees up to 10 organic leads coming through Webchat every day. And the number just increases on game nights when more customers visit the website for information or future ticket inquiries.

“We have anywhere from 5 to 10 leads coming through every day on Webchat. And even more on game nights,” Jeff added.

Podium Payments

Prior to payments, even with a sale done via text, a phone call had to happen to complete the transaction. With Podium, the Jazz team now has the ability to send text-to-pay links directly in their text conversations with customers, saving time and adding convenience to the process.

“Payments have made transactions possible without having to carve out time for a phone call,” said Jeff. “The client is able to securely pay when it’s convenient for them after receiving the invoice.”

Results and ROI

Result #1: Reduced response times to incoming messages to under 5 minutes

Before Podium, the Utah Jazz team wasn’t able to track response times. All communication was on the phone, in email, or through personal text conversations that didn’t route to the larger group. The team had little visibility into how quickly reps were getting back to customer questions and purchase inquiries.

“Since we adopted Podium, we’re able to get back to customers so much faster,” said Cameron. “And for us, that’s very important to make sure people know we are servicing their accounts. Regardless of how much they spend, whether they’re in the front row or in the upper bowl, we want our customers to feel like VIPs. And so much of that is in the communication with each customer.”

Podium allows reps to get back to incoming messages quickly as customers text in about ticket purchases and other questions. As response times have improved, customers experience a personalized conversation in a timely manner rather than a bot-like experience. The team’s goal is promptness. And with Podium, they’re achieving it. Response times to incoming messages are down to under five minutes.

“Podium allows us as leaders to see all of the incoming texts that come to our reps,” Cameron continued. “We can see how quickly they are responding. We can set expectations about those response times. And now we have reps responding within five minutes to each text.”

And when text conversations turn to topics that require a phone call, it’s easy to set up. It allows the customer service rep to keep the text conversation personalized–and adjust to a different platform when needed.

As Cameron put it, “Podium has enabled us to be so much more efficient. We can handle multiple text conversations with more accounts–so many more than we could if we were still only emailing or texting out of personal accounts.”

The team agrees that by shifting to a text-first strategy, they meet the needs of today’s consumers.

Result #2: 300% increase in revenue for in-game season ticket sales in one night

In the past, customer reps would call during or after games to prompt next season sales and deposits. Now, they send an in-game text and get back what they call “in-game reads.” With Podium messaging, what once resulted in only a few voicemails during a game turned into 100 texts and a record-breaking amount of season ticket sales in just one game night.

“We set a record for the number of season tickets sold in one night,” said Jeff. “Before it was a phone call and only a few voicemails. That process turned into multiple weeks. Now with Podium Inbox and Podium Payments, we can sell season tickets in just five minutes.”

In one example, the team used messaging in Podium to sell new season tickets during a game and a return customer spent $52,000.

“People feel comfortable texting and buying something via text now,” Jeff explained. “Before they often felt like they needed to be on the phone to spend that kind of money. But now, people are fine with it.”

Result #3: Increase in email open rates

The team still uses daily and weekly emails, but they now use them in parallel with their text strategy to create an omnichannel experience. Whenever they send an accompanying text message, they see an increase in their email open rates.

“We still have service reps sending daily and weekly emails, but we also send texts through Podium,” said Cameron. “We send follow-ups like, ‘Hey, I just sent you an email about renewals. Please check it as soon as you can.’ And just that process has improved our email open rates. It’s another good example of how Podium has been so valuable to communicate with our clients.”

Result #4: Estimated 70% of sales now involve text messaging

The Jazz now have a modern, more efficient sales process that is better suited to meeting the needs of their customer base. The team estimates that at least 70% of sales include some type of text conversation. Whether the initial interaction with a lead starts over the phone or on a website, a text conversation will be involved at some point in the sale.

70% of our sales have some kind of text involved at some point,” said Cameron. “Whether it’s start to finish or in the middle, they’re utilizing Podium at some point in the majority of our sales.”

An example of a Podium text is as simple as, “Hey, can I call you this afternoon to talk about those seats?” The rep and customer can coordinate on a meeting time. It’s saving time that was spent emailing back and forth or playing phone tag.

“The text conversations are so valuable,” continued Cameron. “It’s something nearly all of our sellers have used at some point in the process–beginning, middle, or end–they’re all utilizing Podium for that.”

Result #5: A more personalized customer experience

With Podium, the Jazz now offer a personalized customer experience through one-to-one, two-way communication. By offering a communication option that their clients already use–text messaging–the conversations build relationships instead of getting lost in overflowing email or voicemail inboxes.

“Overall, Podium offers easier communication,” said Jeff. “There’s more frequent communication with our clients instead of once every three months with an email or a phone conversation. Now we have text going back and forth building a relationship with our customers.”

Result #6: A more personalized customer experience

Before Podium, a sales rep’s relationship with a customer was more formal–checking in at specific times via email or phone call. It was all centered around the professional aspect of selling seats. Now, with one-to-one texting, Podium is helping each sales rep build deeper connections to their clients. So much so that reps often receive texts from customers during a game with messages like, “Did you see that shot? How awesome was that?”

“Podium has allowed us to personalize those client relationships more,” added Cameron. “The relationship starts when they purchase their tickets, but it doesn’t end there. And with texting, we can establish that communication and continue to build the relationship even more.”

Result #7: 200+ text transactions and 20+ hours saved in one month

In the last month alone, the Jazz team processed our 200 transactions through Podium Payments, eliminating the need for just as many phone calls and saving 20+ hours for the team.

“Sending payment requests directly in our text message conversations has been a huge time saver for us,” said Jeff. “Podium Payments saves our teams at least 20 hours a month just from eliminating those payment phone calls.”

Result #8: Doing more with fewer resources

The impact of downsizing the sales team from 20 to 4 during the COVID-19 pandemic and reducing the service team from 12 to 6 has increased the workload of each team member. But Podium has helped ease the burden.

The team ran a campaign late into 2020, offering a rollover credit from last year to the current season. Before Podium, they would have overwhelmed their sales reps with the number of responses they received from customers. But with their messaging platform in place, the sales reps were able to answer every question, respond to every comment, and address every need. And the management team had full visibility throughout the entire process.

“We could see our reps communicating with clients and when they needed extra help, management was able to step in and take a few conversations to push things along. But we could see it all through Podium,” said Cameron.

The campaign helped the team realize they could do more work with fewer resources. With more effective communication through Podium Messaging, Webchat, and more, the team is able to keep up with the inflow of conversations while also ensuring each interaction is personal and responded to quickly.

“To see that fewer people can do the work because we’re able to communicate in a different way with customers–that incredibly effective and it’s saving us a good amount of money each year,” said Cameron.

Conclusion

For the Utah Jazz, the impact of Podium is clear–it’s breaking down communication barriers for customers interested in purchasing tickets. It’s removing the friction in the purchase process. It’s creating more operational efficiency and speed for the sales team. And now, the Jazz are leaders in their league when it comes to leveraging technology to modernize and simplify the entire customer journey.

“Podium has enhanced and improved our client experience. It’s provided efficiency–making us much more efficient in all aspects of communication with our clients,” says Cameron.

Get started with Podium for free today.

64%

increase in reviews

15%

increase in review responses

150+

hours saved across 10 franchises

This is a fake video section for testing.

As the second-largest retail assisted tax prep brand in the country, Jackson Hewitt prepares millions of federal, state, and local income tax returns every year. Headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, Jackson Hewitt has been a trusted tax advisory for over 35 years and boasts nearly 6,000 locations across the United States.

In July of 2020, Jackson Hewitt implemented Podium to streamline its online review program. With Podium, Jackson Hewitt saw a 64% increase in the quantity of reviews year-over-year, increased their overall average star rating from 4.73 to 4.77, and saved certain franchise owners a combined 150 hours each tax season in reporting.

The Challenge

While Jackson Hewitt boasted very high customer experience scores, they struggled to get customers to share their experience online in reviews.

Manual review invites yielded meager results

Years before launching a manually-driven review collection program, Jackson Hewitt had less than one review per store location. But even after implementing a standardized process to collect reviews—asking each customer while their tax return was printed—Jackson Hewitt could only scale to 10 reviews per store.

Inconsistent review processes created internal silos

With the lack of reviews for each location, individual franchisees started building their own aids and assets to increase reviews. Different processes at each location created inconsistency and kept the corporate team out of the loop.

No scalable system for Google Reviews meant missing out on potential clients

Arul Sundaram, a Senior Director at Jackson Hewitt, started to see a few franchisees shift and focus solely on Google Reviews. As he spoke to franchise owners, he heard similar feedback, “What’s really driving clients for us this year are Google Reviews.”

Concerns around negative reviews

As franchise owners asked customers for reviews, concerns about negative reviews increased. Often the only customers that posted reviews were the few that had an atypical, negative experience. This left the franchisees nervous to actively solicit reviews.

Strict compliance regulations

As a regulated payer to service delivered through a retail footprint, it’s critical Jackson Hewitt follow both legal regulations and compliance. The team wasn’t clear on how they would get review data in and how they should communicate with customers. Sending text messages in place of a verbal review ask was enticing, but the team needed every aspect of the process to be approved through their legal team.

The Podium Solution

Realizing that their online reputation was key to attracting new clients, Jackson Hewitt set out to find a solution that would automate and bring consistency to asking for reviews. With Podium, they found what they were looking for—asking for reviews via text.

A Successful Beta Rollout of Podium Reviews

In July of 2020, Jackson Hewitt rolled out a beta program of Podium Reviews to 20 high-performing, corporate-owned locations. After the first three or four weeks, the positive feedback came rolling in. “We had stores running the program asking to continue for the rest of the season. We had managers saying they really liked it,” said Arul. “We compared the percentage of customers converting before Podium versus those that converted after and we saw a lift. It worked,” said Arul.

In January of 2021, the team scaled the new review program to 2,000 more Jackson Hewitt corporate stores and implemented a more automated program. Now, the Jackson Hewitt team sends a contact file with consenting customers directly to Podium. Podium scrubs the file sends out review invites via text message, and customers quickly complete their online reviews.

A Personalized Review Experience

To provide a personalized experience, while also maintaining a high standard for data security, the team couldn’t allow all 25,000 employees—many of which are seasonal—to log in to see reporting data or send personalized review requests from their own devices. With Podium’s help, Jackson Hewitt delivers QR codes to each office, automatically linking directly to the Google Business Profile page for each specific store. Clients scan the code, confirm their location, and leave a review.

Results and ROI

→ 64% increase in the quantity of reviews YOY and an increase in average star rating from 4.73 to a 4.77

Jackson Hewitt increased their total reviews to over 88,000. “Podium has helped us see that asking everybody helps. If a tax preparer forgets to ask the customer for a review, we have a solution for that,” said Arul. “And reviews are up 64% year-over-year!”

→ 15% review response rate for franchise locations

With Podium, franchisees saw an average review response rate of up to 15%. Corporate offices also saw higher response rates than ever before at 9%, triple the response compared to locations not in the program.

→ Increase in new Jackson Hewitt customers

Jackson Hewitt saw those offices that had more reviews had more new client growth than stores with fewer / no reviews. With higher reviews, rankings increase over time and new customers have the opportunity to read third-party feedback about their local store.

→ A scalable system for requesting and responding to reviews

After analyzing the review data, the team found that Thursday and Friday were the most common days for review completion. But most customers visited Jackson Hewitt on Mondays and Tuesdays. The lag proved the need for the follow-up reminder instead of relying solely on the in-person ask. “We knew not everyone was asking for a review—and we needed help following up. Implementing Podium solved both of those problems,” said Arul.

→ Increased visibility into reviews by location

With Podium, review data from each franchise and corporate location now routes to a single dashboard—improving visibility for Arul’s team. “It was really useful to see it all in one place. Getting that data at the office level was a huge win for us.”

→ Found a partner in innovation and solution development

One of the most valuable results Jackson Hewitt found after implementing Podium was the partnership with the Podium team. “It makes such a difference and it’s so useful to have a Podium team thinking about how to fit Podium into how Jackson Hewitt works,” said Arul.

→ Simplified and improved client experience

With Podium, the review ask is self-explanatory and easy. “For those people that might have gotten lost trying to post a review, those that might have never left a review, or those that didn’t know how to leave a review—Podium has simplified the entire process. It’s just a better experience for clients,” said Arul.

→ Increased resolved issues while changing negative reviews to positive reviews

As more and more reviews come in for each Jackson Hewitt location, the team has implemented a process to navigate and respond to negative reviews. “The office is now able to follow up with the client and resolve the issue. In the past, it was challenging to ask the customer to update their review—now it’s so much simpler,” said Arul.

→ Saved a combined 150 hours across 10 franchisees during tax season

Estimating a total of 15 saved hours during tax season for each of the 10 franchisees in their beta program, Jackson Hewitt saw a combined time savings of 150 hours or 6.25 days. Each franchise owner saves at least 4 hours each month in gathering review data. As they roll out Podium to all ~350 franchisees, estimated savings are high—5,250 hours/218 days worth of work—during their 15-week tax season.

For Jackson Hewitt, implementing Podium has done more than increase review counts, average star ratings, and saved time for Jackson Hewitt tax preparers. Podium has offered a partnership, an extension of the Jackson Hewitt team—automating processes that once were manual, adding consistency to messaging and communication that once was disjointed, and implementing a review process that’s scalable, security-focused, and customer friendly.

“We evaluated several other vendors—some who were priced lower—but we chose Podium because it was clear Podium paid attention to our business and would be a partner with us,” said Arul.

Podium can help your business too. Get started for free today.

Array

100

Succesful

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How an insurance agency in Chatham, New York – population 4,000 – become the state’s top-rated option.

When Matthew Wood took over his family’s insurance agency, he knew he was being tasked with upholding one of Chatham’s most beloved local businesses. To keep his customers happy, engaged, and loyal, he and the MetzWood team adopted Podium. Check out the video above to learn:

How MetzWood leverages Podium Webchat to gather leads and engage with them via text message
Why serve customers with lightning-fast response times plays a key role in the team’s success
How MetzWood uses Podium Reviews to maintain a stellar online reputation

Array

Local Search 101: Marketing Agencies

4 Ways Lawyers Can Attract and Service Clients

How to Boost your Online Rankings and Reviews

13 Quick Tips for Hiring: Marketing Agencies

5 tips for creating a seamless digital-to-physical

Finding (and hiring) your practice’s next great employee

How to Grow Your Insurance Agency with Podium Software

402%

Increase in online reviews

15%+

Webchat conversion into actual sales

Website visits per month converted to phone calls

This is a fake video section for testing.

While some HVAC dealerships’ sales are cooling down during COVID-19, others are heating up. The difference? A sleek digital transformation.

Trane Technologies offers elite membership for dealers.

Over 20 years ago, Trane Technologies, one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of heating and cooling systems, decided to partner with its dealers through an “elite” program. Dealers who met certain criteria would receive benefits from Trane to boost their online presence. These benefits included online lead generation, social media advertising, and online banners. While the program started strong, after the first few years of the elite membership program, Trane wasn’t pleased with the value they were providing and dealers were having a hard time gauging the true worth of some of the program’s non-quantifiable benefits. Concerned, Trane executives began brainstorming ways to deliver more effective and measurable value to their elite members.

Podium gives dealers tools for a sleek customer experience.

Trane knew that manufacturer sales depended on not only the product itself but also the customer experience. After talking it over, Trane executives scrapped the program’s old benefits and adopted a fresh focus on improving the customer journey.

Most modern consumers expect a sleek digital experience, from the first impression to a done deal. As part of the program revamp, and in effort to help execute the seamless customer journey vision, Trane partnered with Podium and made the solution available to its elite members.

Dealers who chose Podium experienced 8% more overall sales than those who didn’t.

Through Podium, these dealerships began interacting with website visitors, texting customers, boosting their online reviews, and implementing touch-free payments. This provided a smooth and personalized experience unmatched by competitors. In fact, during the COVID-19 outbreak and shutdowns in 2020, Trane dealerships that chose Podium saw an 8% higher increase in sales than those that did not.

Suddenly, Trane’s elite program was providing the type of value they always envisioned.

“Getting Podium through Trane’s elite program has been a huge benefit,” said Gary Nordin, Head of Information Systems at Renaud Electric Heating and Cooling. “We have seen the value immediately. We are glad that Trane sees the value too and made the move to a better process in collecting reviews and growing our business.”

Pandemic or not, our goal is to help companies like Trane improve the experience for their dealers and end customers through a seamless digital experience.

As Katherine Shin, President of Customer Experience at Trane, said, “When customers are happy, the dealer is happy, and when the dealer is happy, the manufacturer is happy.”

Dominate Local Search in the Professional Industries

Business Text Messaging for Hospitality

500+

inbound leads in 2 months

15x

increase in monthly reviews

0.43

change in average rating

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In 2014, Earle Haggard and two of his colleagues left their corporate marketing jobs to start High Five Media, a digital and traditional marketing agency servicing local businesses across Oklahoma.

“We saw a need for locally owned businesses navigating the digital world. They were getting lost,” Earle told us. “They were really good at being a dentist, or a roofer, or a plumber. They weren’t great at marketing their business, and usually that falls somewhere in the middle or lower end of their list of things to do.”

High Five Media grew their agency to serve hundreds of clients, hosting 370 websites while managing clients’ ad spend, SEO, and social media presences. They then added a video and photo team to continue offering premium services to their clients.

But there was one problem their clients kept running into that High Five Media couldn’t do much about: online reputation management.

Clients were struggling to collect and manage reviews.

Earle and his team were successfully helping their clients’ transform their digital presence, but they didn’t have the time or resources to assist clients with reputation management or direct customer communications.

The answer to High Five Media’s problem ironically came from some of their other clients. “We had a couple of clients who swore by Podium,” Earle told us. One client shared how they had gone from just four Google reviews to 60 in just three months. Earle was starting to see how a partnership with Podium would be invaluable to his many clients who were approaching him about reviews.

And the results weren’t limited to that one client, nor to reviews only. Beyond the early indicators that led Earle to eventually partner with Podium, many of his clients started succeeding at not only transforming their reputation through reviews, but also generating leads and communicating with customers via text.

Discovering Podium’s partner program.

After Earle’s clients showed him the impact of Podium on their businesses, he started to do some of his own research. That’s when he learned about Podium’s partner program.

Earle learned that Podium had a variety of partnership options available for all different types of organizations, so he reached out. He was connected with a Podium dedicated partner manager, Zach Williams, who made sure that a partnership would benefit Earle and his customers above all else.

“Zach is great,” Earle told us. “When someone has any questions about their reviews, good or bad, I tee it over to Zach and he takes it from there. I just need our clients to be served. And Zach has done that.”

Watching clients achieve real results with Podium.

After High Five Media connected another one of their clients (a pest control company) with Podium, they went from averaging 1.3 reviews per month to over 20. Another client in the retail space increased their monthly reviews 10 fold. Yet another client (a dispensary), who’s using Podium to generate both reviews and website leads, has generated over 500 inbound leads in their first two months with the platform.

“It’s a great software platform. It’s really easy to use,” Earle told us. I’ve tried to do [reputation management] myself. It’s horrible. You can’t keep up because there are all these different places that somebody can leave a bad review, and then clients get frustrated… [Podium] is easy and I trust the process.”

Podium is the only solution outside of his own agency that Earle recommends to his clients. It’s important to him and his partners that they provide only those solutions they know they can trust to make their clients’ businesses more profitable.

“I steer clients in the right direction [to Podium], and I ultimately probably get all the credit”, he said with a laugh. “If I had to summarize it, it’s easy and I trust the process. It works. It changes [my clients’] online reputation, which is what I love about it.”

5 Ways Lawyer Reviews Can Help Your Practice

The Lawyer’s Guide to Avvo Reviews

Zillow Realtor Reviews (eBook)

Google Reviews 101 for Marketing Agencies

Why insurance agents fail: what not to do as an independent insurance agent.

How to convert more web traffic into tenants.

How to Get Mortgage Broker Reviews

1,130

Webchat Leads

16%

Webchat Lead Conversion

971

Google Reviews

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Your website is some of your most valuable real estate.

No one knows this better than Tony Yraguen, the owner of RPM Alamo, a residential property management company in San Antonio.

Tony described San Antonio as a “Mecca” for property management, and 11 months ago, many real estate companies were nipping at each other’s heels for a piece of the action.

Instead of playing “bigger or better” with his competitors, Tony decided to do something different—connect with people online and treat his website as valuable real estate.

Wanting to increase the value of his website, Tony decided to focus on making customer communication quicker and easier through a live chat feature.

Unfortunately, the first two live chat companies he tried proved disastrous.

“The first one was terrible,” Tony said. “We turned it off immediately because we couldn’t even really manage it. And the second one was clunky– It frustrated the heck out of me and I was on the phone with them every other day trying to figure something out.”

In one last effort to remodel the website’s chat feature, Tony looked into Podium.

“After one presentation with Podium, it was over,” Tony said. “I knew exactly what was going on and that this is what we needed,”

Seemingly overnight, RPM Alamo’s website had transformed into a virtual consultation room where customers could “stop by” and chat with the salespeople.

“Conversations that are coming in from Webchat are incredible,” Tony said. “It feels like we’re right in front of them and they’re just coming in to ask simple questions that we can answer.”

With Webchat, salespeople were able to chat with website visitors in an easy and non-threatening way. The result? More viable leads for clients (property owners) AND customers (renters).

“We’re increasing the speed of communication, and that converts leads,” Tony said. “Podium is a lead-converting machine.”

As Webchat improved customer communication, customer satisfaction increased–along with positive online reviews.

“We’re able to deliver an exceptional customer experience by keeping in contact with them,” Tony said. “Then we can ask, ‘Do you have 30 seconds to fill out a review really quick?’”

These reviews have improved SEO, making it easier for potential customers to find the website, and building on a foundation of hundreds of 5-star reviews.

“When potential clients talk to us on the phone or through Webchat, they’re literally telling us, ‘I don’t know how we can’t go with you guys because of the number of 5-star reviews you have. I might as well just choose you; where do I sign?’” Tony said.

Since signing up with Podium, RPM Alamo has been accelerating in a positive feedback loop of better customer communication, higher customer satisfaction, and more positive online reviews.

“The overall increase for our business has been at least 20 percent,” Tony said. “We’ve generated more revenue, decreased vacancy rates, and pulled in more leads for our clients than we could have in multiple years. That is priceless.”

RPM’s website is no longer a pretty “for sale” sign in the yard; it’s a hub of activity that generates valuable leads and positive online reviews. Finally, a valuable, easy-to-manage piece of real estate. No property tax necessary.

Zillow Realtor Online Review Management

Location

Employees

Years in Business

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Yummy’s, a family-owned Korean barbeque restaurant, celebrated its two-year anniversary in an unconventional way—with hand sanitizer and face masks.

Yummy’s is one of many local restaurants trying to navigate the uncharted waters of pandemic food service.

It began two weeks ago when Sun Choi, one of the restaurant’s owners, started noticing a decline in customers.

“We did everything other restaurants were doing, making sure everything is clean, sanitizing everything, sanitizing door handles – we even had all our employees wear face masks too, handling food,” Choi said. “But even then, I know people were becoming more aware of the coronavirus and getting worried.”

In response, the Chois looked for ways to be part of the solution. They realized one way they could help was through their food, and ended up giving away 300 plates of fried rice to the community.

Over the next few days, patronage continued to decline. After lower and lower customer counts, Choi began to panic and wrote a heartfelt post on his personal Facebook page.

“I just did an honest post, just kind of our situation,” Choi said. “I took a picture of our restaurant- it was empty. I just said ‘hey, this is what’s going on right now. Last week was our worst week ever and nobody expected this, but it came.”

In his post, Choi offered to sell “family-packs,” a family-sized meal for $30. Much to his surprise, the post received close to 500 replies, and he was overwhelmed by the response.

“To be really honest, I was expecting maybe ten people to say ‘hey, I want that package,’” Choi said. “But since hundreds of people already responded, I was freaking out and I didn’t know how to handle it except manually.”

He turned to Podium, a business-to-customer texting platform not traditionally used by restaurateurs, to handle the demand.

———-

How Yummy’s uses Podium’s text-to-takeout

A customer sends a message to Yummy’s through a widget on the restaurant’s website.
That message gets rerouted to a Podium inbox, the home for all inbound messages.
When Yummy’s responds to the customer, the message arrives as a text message to the customer’s phone.
Sun Choi records what city the customer is in, and coordinates his family pack drop-offs accordingly. (For ten or more orders from the same city, Sun Choi will organize a delivery).
Customers pay for the order through Podium’s secure Payments feature.
Yummy’s texts the customer through Podium to coordinate the time and location of the drop-off.

———-

“We’re just going city to city and I’m just saying, ‘Hey if I get at least 10 orders, I’m going to go out wherever you guys are at and I’m going to drop off these family packs. Tell your family, friends, neighbors, and I’ll be there; I’ll make it happen; I’ll drive two hours.”

Despite Choi’s creative solutions, he says Yummy’s is barely breaking even. This may seem discouraging, but Choi says as long as he can afford to pay his employees, he’s happy.

“My advice to restaurant owners is: don’t think about making a profit right now; you have to think about surviving,” Choi said. “Just think about making sure that you keep your employees. I have a couple of single mothers and they’re worried about paying rent and things like that. My goal is to make sure that they can survive and be able to provide for their kids.”

Whatever the conditions, Choi is determined to persevere, and encourages other local restaurateurs to do the same.

“I know right now it’s hard for a lot of restaurants,” Choi said. “But I just want to tell them: just jump on and just think outside the box. Because right now, every business has to reinvent how they’re doing business.”

100+

Local Restaurants

500+

Locations

1,000+

Orders Processed

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many states have imposed social distancing policies that force restaurants to close their dining rooms. Now, restaurants are banding together and quickly adapting to new technologies to overcome this new challenge and maintain their businesses open.

Eateries across the country have taken creative approaches to leverage off-site ordering, which, a few weeks prior, would have been only a small portion of revenue. Takeout, Curbside pickup, and delivery services have all been emphasized as effective methods to serve customers while maintaining a safe environment for employees and patrons. Some restaurants are even offering “contactless” ordering methods, with online-ordering, pay-by-text services, drop-off delivery, and more.

But for restaurants that don’t already have access to curbside pickup and other technologies that enable contactless service, shutting their doors became the immediate option not to lose their business.

When our team learned about the restaurant closures, and how scarce tech solutions are in the restaurant space, we decided to offer local restaurants a suite of tools to help them curve the rate of loss of business, closures and employee furloughs.

“For many restaurants, the only means for survival is curbside delivery. We have never offered this service, so we somewhat scrambled to put this in place,” says Larin Warner, owner of The Protein Foundry. “My sister called me and suggested the Podium platform and that it could help our sales right now. She offered to come to our house to get us onboarded and all setup! Podium was the perfect solution for a seamless transition to curbside delivery!”

Throughout all of this, open, convenient channels of communication have also become essential so that restaurants can reassure their customers in this challenging time. By leveraging texting tools for their websites, their teams are able to easily engage with their patrons, updating them about new business hours, improved sanitation policies, and how customers can order.

“Webchat has helped with our production flow and communications to our customers. It has been so nice to not tie up the landline with multiple incoming and outgoing calls, plus our customers have loved texting when they arrive,” said Warner. “Our business has had to make so many changes in this new climate, and we are doing everything we can to stay relevant and adapt to the new mandates to stay open.”

The ability to seamlessly chat with a customer from their initial order, through payment and final pickup has helped restaurants stay open. Local eateries are also creating a sense of safety by enabling their patrons to pay via text and avoid the current discomfort of handing over their cards. Caterers have also benefited from the text to pay approach as patrons can continue supporting their favorite businesses by buying now and enjoying later.

“So far, Webchat and Payments are great for our catering. It is a no brainer for our communication with customers. I am shocked at how many questions are coming in from our websites every day and how many orders are filled,” says Kyle Roney, owner of 53 Management. “I am confident that when the world goes back to normal, we will increase our bookings for catering, weddings, events, and more because of how quickly we have been able to communicate now.”

Though COVID-19 is causing large-scale effects on restaurants, those that leverage text-based solutions to adapt to the current climate will more easily minimize the crisis’ impact on their business. And by leaning into non traditional approaches and tapping into the local community, together, we’ll be able to keep restaurants’ doors open, ensuring all of us can revisit them after the crisis subsides.

115

Inbound Webchat Leads per Month

25%

Webchat Lead Conversion

14X

Increase in Monthly Google Reviews

This is a fake video section for testing.

David Taylor didn’t expect to be where he is now. In 2017, after years of running his advertising agency in Anchorage, Alaska, he suddenly found himself running the marketing department of an adventure business in Maui, Hawaii.

That business, Kai Kanani, provides private charters, snorkeling, and sailing tours to tourists from around the world. When David arrived, he knew right away that marketing and advertising would play a critical role in the company’s future. As one of the top tourist destinations in the U.S., the competition in Maui is stiff, especially for private charters and snorkeling adventures.

On top of the stiff competition, the large hotel next to Kai Kanani’s location—which provided most of their foot traffic—closed down. It was converted into a private club. Just like that, most of their organic sales opportunities were gone.

This could have been the end of the story.
Luckily, it isn’t.

When you speak with David, you learn two things about him: (1) he doesn’t back down from a challenge, and (2) he always assumes he has something to learn from others. So, he started studying the competition.

That’s when he came across something interesting. “When I saw it, my gut said, ‘that’s it’,” David told us.

“I’d lie awake at night wondering how many people were leaving our site because they couldn’t text us,” he told us. “I didn’t understand how pressing the need for messaging was until I saw that our competitors were doing it.”

An unexpected solution.

If you were to hear David talk about his personal feelings toward texting, you’d wonder why he was so convinced it was what his business needed. During our conversation, he described to us his personal relationship with texting.

“I’m actually not a texter,” he told us. “I hate texting.”

Wait, how does someone who hates texting end up using it to run their business?

Remember when we mentioned that David always assumes he has something to learn from others? Here’s what he told us: “I’ve always taken a one-down position when it comes to marketing and advertising. People will tell you what they need. You just have to take a walk down the street—all you see are people texting.”

He went on to explain how people don’t want to call a business because they don’t want to take the time to talk to somebody. They don’t want to email because it’s slow and easy to ignore. They prefer to text because it just flows naturally. Of course, he was preaching to the choir.

This story would probably be more interesting if David would’ve experienced setback after setback on his way to implementing text messaging, but it was sort of an overnight success.

“The real shocker was how fast it happened when we installed Podium,” he told us. “It was instant. All of a sudden we were getting messages all day. It was a no-brainer.”

In the end, money talks.

David told us more about how insanely fast the messages started coming in. It wasn’t just about how fast they were coming in, but also how fast his team was able to respond and close deals.

“It was shocking how quickly we could answer questions, and how quickly they’d go straight from that to booking a trip,” he told us. “It was very fluid because most of them were going through the website to text us.”

Shortly after implementing Podium, someone texted them to ask about their tours and ended up booking a 35-person private charter. That single text thread was also a quick return on their investment. David finished this story with a laugh, “We were like, ‘Cool, that pays for a year of Podium right there’.”

68%

increase in website clicks from Google

45%

increase in calls from Google listing

28%

increase in indirect search results

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Good things don’t come to those who wait—they come to those who are consistent. That’s how Brent Thurman has approached running his agency, Keystone Insurance, for more than 16 years. “We’re playing the long game,” Brent told us. “A lot of agents try to get as many reviews as possible in a short amount of time, but that fizzles out pretty quickly.”

Brent started in the days of the Yellow Pages and MSN Messenger. He saw early on the value messaging could bring to his agency. But those days were different. No one expected you to respond immediately. Now, we live in a world of Amazon and on-demand everything. With Brent’s foresight, Keystone adopted messaging long before the competition.

Keystone now uses messaging to get customer reviews on a consistent basis. “We just try to get five reviews every week,” Brent told us. “I don’t want to get 200 reviews in two months and then not have anything, because my experience has been that Google sees through that.”

Brent doesn’t use messaging just to get reviews. His business revolves around messaging. “I always have my phone and—when I get a message–I text back wherever I am,” Brent told us. “Then, I can pass the conversation to another agent.”

Listening to Brent, it sounds like Keystone has had no problem implementing messaging to keep up with consumer expectations, right?

Wrong. It wasn’t always this easy.

Email vs. Text

Keystone used to send out review invites through email. While it helped them get some reviews, the invites would often get lost in the client’s inbox. It’s much harder to lose a text than it is to lose an email. Since implementing Podium, Keystone has gotten more reviews in five months than they had received in the previous five years.

The conversation shouldn’t end when they leave the website.

Collecting leads from their website hasn’t always been easy, either. Keystone had tried five different live chat solutions on their website. They stopped using the last one because it was too hard to manage. It required having someone logged in at their desk in order to respond to customers. More often than not, the customer would drop before someone responded.

“Customers are online looking for you because they want to take care of their problem right then,” Brent told us. “Sometimes we wouldn’t respond until hours later. By then, they’d gone to one of our competitors.” With Podium, Keystone no longer loses potential leads—they turn them into new contacts who they can text immediately.

Meeting—and exceeding—modern consumers’ expectations.

With Podium, Brent has made messaging part of virtually every aspect of his business. “It’s the perfect solution for making it easy for our employees to look for those opportunities to get reviews and to communicate with each other,” Brent told us. “We have clients all the time that text—even during business hours—rather than calling us. Whether they want a copy of their ID cards or whatever, they just start a chat.”

Brent’s clients appreciate these consistently convenient interactions, but the benefits don’t end there. As a result of implementing Podium, Keystone has increased website clicks from their Google listing by nearly 70%, calls by 45%, and indirect search results by nearly 30%. Brent and his team are proof that convenience can be the rule rather than the exception.

500%

Increase in new reviews

113

New leads per month across all locations

4.7 to 4.9

Increased rating

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Wilner & O’Reilly is an immigration law firm with eight locations spread across California, Utah, and Idaho. Though the firm has been in business since 2003, they’ve always looked for ways to improve operations both online and offline. Getting found through reviews is one way they have improved their online reputation.

It’s not that Wilner & O’Reilly had particularly bad reviews, or even that their clients weren’t satisfied, they just didn’t have a way for clients to easily leave reviews on the sites that matter most.

“We really had no control over our online reputation,” said Karin Ikeda, Marketing Director at Wilner & O’Reilly. “Once a case was over, we would send our clients a closing letter that also asked them to leave a review. But most people wouldn’t take the time to find our Google or Facebook page to leave a review.”

Karin was always on the lookout for tools that would help the firm get more reviews, and when one of the partners suggested Podium, she knew it would be a good fit. Sending review invites via messaging made it much easier to connect customers to review sites. It just made sense.

“Podium made it easier for our clients to leave a review,” said Karin. “We knew we had a lot of happy clients we’ve served over the years, so our team went back and sent invitations to leave a review and we had a fantastic response.”

In addition to building an online reputation, Karin was looking to improve interactions with clients. Over time, it had become more difficult to connect with customers over the phone. She noticed that customer communication preferences had changed. If the firm wanted to reach a client, texting would be far more effective than playing phone tag.

Not only do their clients prefer texting, but it’s also a much better approach for their attorneys. In the past, attorneys would give out their personal cell phone numbers to make themselves available to clients, which wasn’t ideal.

“Now, most of our attorneys have the Podium app on their phone,” stated Karin. “The app gives clients the same access they had before but makes it easier to manage communications..”

The ability to message customers has been a game-changer for Wilner & O’Reilly. It has helped them not only build their online reputation and improve client interactions but also convert more website traffic through Webchat—making growing their firm as easy as texting back-and-forth with prospects.

“We would definitely recommend Podium to any law firm looking to get more reviews and text with current and potential clients,” concluded Karin.

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Located in the beautiful Palm Springs area, world-renowned for its music festivals, golf courses, and desert scenery, Fantasy Springs has everything for a fun night out or weekend getaway. The property includes a 250-room luxury hotel, an 18-hole golf course, multiple dining options, a sparkling pool and outdoor entertainment area, expansive casino floor, and the Special Events Center featuring artists such as Tim McGraw, Snoop Dogg and Shakira on any given night. It offers more than even the most ambitious vacationers could hope to pack into their desert getaway.

At a resort of this caliber, delivering great guest experiences is absolutely critical. Between the hundreds of daily phone calls, email inquiries, and messages posted to social media and online review platforms, the lines of communication needed to be streamlined. Fantasy Springs’ guests are shifting the way they communicate with the resort, preferring to engage via text, online and through social media.

“There were probably a lot of guests and potential guests that we missed an opportunity to do business with because we weren’t able to communicate with them the way they wanted to,” says Director of Advertising Mandi Witkower. “It was important that we reevaluate and upgrade our process.”

In order to better manage the lines of communication, Podium helped aggregate all communication platforms while simultaneously allowing multiple employees easy access.

A two-fold strategy was proposed. First, Podium’s Webchat functionality would make it easier for guests to reach out directly and receive timely responses. Second, Podium’s Reviews tool leveraged positive guest experiences to reach more potential guests.

“Podium helped train representatives from every department so that the appropriate people could answer questions or field inquiries related to their department,” Witkower says. “The immediate benefits were quicker response times and improved transparency for all team members.”

Within the first six months of implementation, Podium’s customer-centric solutions were paying off for Fantasy Springs.

“Podium has alleviated some of those communication bottlenecks, while helping create a better overall guest experience,” says Online Marketing Manager Nicole Lucas.

Webchat enabled the Fantasy Springs team to streamline the communication process and address inquiries quickly and effectively.

“Podium has been extremely helpful in terms of managing all of our channels across the board,” Lucas says. “Before I’d have to log in to Trip Advisor, Google, Facebook, and more. Now it’s all in one place and easy.”

Podium helped to bridge the gap between various touchpoints in the customer journey and allowed Fantasy Springs’ staff to communicate more efficiently. According to Mandi Witkower, “Podium has really helped keep our guests more satisfied because they get answers, are being heard, and feel as though they actually have a voice.”

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Text messaging can come in handy, especially when handling sensitive situations like funeral planning. Ronald Haulman, Executive Director of Neptune Society Funeral Home and Cremation Services, has been dealing with sensitive and heartbreaking situations with customers for 25 years. They have been using Podium for two months and have already seen how texting can improve the customer experience.

“When we found out that we could text our customers back and forth on the Podium dashboard, our entire strategy for communicating with customers changed,” Haulman said. “Getting reviews when emotional distress is at an all time high for our customers is difficult. But, with Podium’s Messaging Platform we have found that we can prepare our customers with success. If they give us the green light to communicate via text, we will text them. At the end of a long week’s conversation, handling a very sensitive subject with them, if we have handled their situation with care, they are more likely to leave a five-star review.”

NON-INTRUSIVE COMMUNICATION

Haulman and his staff deal with information that may be more comfortable to exchange through a text, like letting their customers know when a death certificate has arrived. “A lot of times our customers are more comfortable planning stuff surrounding the death of their loved one via text. It is easier for them to do emotionally,” Haulman said. “For example my staff will text customers letting them know that we have sent the death certificate out to the doctor, or that everything is fine and we have the paperwork and that their loved one is ready to go to the crematory.”

The ability to reach out to customers through Podium’s Messaging Platform in a non-intrusive way makes it easier to gather the information that they need. It also has allowed Haulman and his team to develop positive relationships with customers in their time of despair.

“After you have texted back and forth with your customer seven or eight times, the customer knows that you care for them and their family,” Haulman said. “That alone makes it that much easier and likely that you will get a five-star review. Messaging Platform has given us another medium to connect and care for our customers.”

MORE TEXTS, MORE MONEY

Since using the Messaging Platform to develop relationships and connect with customers, Haulman has seen a 20% increase in the reviews he has received. “Before Podium, we never got reviews because we didn’t have any connection with the customer outside of a phone call,” Haulman said. “Now with Messaging Platform we can text and develop that superior customer experience.”

Haulman turned on the “Click-to-Message” button on his Google Business Profile account recently, driving more traffic to the Messaging Platform.

“Just last week we got a customer through Google’s Click-to-Message” Haulman said. “I got a text from someone over the weekend, and they turned into a customer because I was able to respond and answer their questions.”

TIME SAVINGS

Messaging Platform is also a huge time saver for Haulman and his staff. “For my heavy Messaging Platform users, it probably saves them around 10% of their daily time,” Haulman said. “For my lower users, it is probably somewhere in the 1-2% range. But everyone that is using Messaging Platform is reporting back to me that their time spent communicating to customers is down dramatically.”

TEXTING IS THE FUTURE

“If you had asked me to text customers 15 years ago, I would have told you that 13-year-old girls text message, and there was no place for it in a professional setting,” Haulman said. “But now, I would be entirely wrong. Customers want to know things and they don’t always want a phone call if they can get their answer in a text. Even our older customers are more okay with us sending them a text. They really like it.”

Not only are customers happier with this form of communication, but employees also are being more efficient in the office.

“My staff is reporting higher levels of efficiency by using Messaging Platform, because they are not getting on the phone and having long phone calls,” Haulman said. “Now with Messaging Platform we are able to give the customers what they want, when they want, and do it very quickly.”

45X

increase in average monthly reviews

6.7%

increase in average star rating

200+

total reviews

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From barbecues to bar mitzvahs, On Call Event Rentals provides lighting, decor, and more to hundreds of celebrations across Southern California every year. But as business grew, communication for their customers and coworkers became headache-inducing. Planning a party for 100 is hard. Trying to plan that same party between texts, phone calls, emails and more was nearly impossible. The team at On Call Event Rentals knew they needed a scalable communication platform that kept customers happy and coworkers on the same page.

When it comes to planning big events with lots of moving parts, the team at On Call Event Rentals doesn’t sweat it anymore. “Thanks to Podium we don’t spend 20 minutes on the phone, now we get replies in 20 seconds.” says Cedric. Even the delivery drivers at On Call Event Rentals use Podium to coordinate deliveries, document customer preferences and send review invites. Customers can find On Call Event Rentals from Reviews, connect via Webchat and plan every last detail with the Messenger Platform. “And that happens every day.” said Cedric.

54X

Increase in Average Monthly Reviews

113%

Increase in Average Star Rating

640

Total Reviews

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When Frederick Fret started as Operations Manager at WPD Management in March of 2017, the company had 14 reviews and a 2.2 star rating. Before applying for the position, he assumed WPD Management didn’t care about their reputation. “The only thing I can do is assume you don’t take care of tenants, which wasn’t the truth.” said Frederick. After accepting the position and assuming responsibility for more than 3,000 units on the south side of Chicago, Frederick realized how poorly WPD’s online reputation reflected reality.

Determined to update WPD Management’s online presence, Frederick looked to Podium. “I was working with another company that used Podium, and I saw how easy it was to use and to train people on it.” Frederick created a friendly competition between property managers to see who could get the most online reviews—taking full advantage Podium’s leaderboard. “I think in the first month we got 200 reviews.” he said. This skyrocketed WPD’s online reputation to accurately show just how much they care about their tenants and employees. “Podium allows you to give the people you service the opportunity to be your biggest marketing tool.”

Frederick came into his position at WPD understanding how important it is to show tenants you care. “If you’re a great people manager, then you’re going to be a great property manager. Podium allows us to do that because it gives us the one thing that everyone wants more of—communication.” While Frederick’s original challenge was low quantity and quality of reviews, he’s found numerous opportunities to show WPD cares through Podium’s messaging tool. “If we care about the tenants, that means we care about our employees,” said Frederick, “and Podium helps us set that standard.”

109%

Increase in Call Volume

123%

Increase in Website Sessions

1,003

Total Reviews

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American 1 Credit Union, based in South Central Michigan and serving more than 58,000 members, is in growth mode. While they’ve been busy opening new branches, their customer review process has stalled. The credit union reached out to unsatisfied customers who left negative reviews, but they weren’t getting many new reviews to help bolster their online reputation. Laura Pryor, vice president of marketing and communications, said, “There was no big effort in terms of getting more reviews. I mean, you can ask people, but most don’t post positive reviews organically.”

American 1 Credit Union received an invaluable recommendation from its auto dealership partner. They told credit union leadership about using Podium to improve their online reputation management. American 1 Credit Union decided to demo Podium services and was struck with the platform’s simplicity. “I knew that we needed it,” Pryor said.

As American 1 Credit Union rolled out Podium’s services, the team quickly embraced the positive changes. “It was easy with our team because they were excited about it,” said Abby Smith, vice president of branch operations. “You can send out this review request and when your member sends them back it’s just a nice little compliment, so it’s kind of self-driving in that way.”

Customer feedback is important to American 1 Credit Union, and Podium has helped the company make major strides. Since implementing Podium, American 1 Credit Union’s star rating has risen from 3.9 to 4.6.

One specific piece of feedback that American 1 has seen a lot lately is about Podium Webchat—a convenient channel of communication that allows customers to ask quick questions without waiting for someone to answer the phone.

American 1 Credit Union has also noticed more search traffic. “I’m amazed at how many searches there are right around our branches,” said Pryor. Smith added, “People don’t go to the second page in Google; they’re not looking for you. You need to be at the top of the list.”

Products

Solutions

Resources

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About S&R Insurance

The Challenge

The Podium Solution

Results and ROI

→ More than 1,000 new reviews with an average of 20+ reviews per month

→ More than 700+ Webchat leads in 1 year

→ 120% increase in website traffic from Google

→ 30% revenue growth during the pandemic

→ 3x longer retention for customers that leave a review

Explore Related Products

Reviews

Webchat

Feedback

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About Vineyard City

The Challenge

The Podium Solution

Results and ROI

Explore Related Products

Reviews

Webchat

Feedback

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About Real Salt Lake

The Challenge

The Podium Solution

Results and ROI

Explore Related Products

Reviews

Webchat

Feedback

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About the Utah Jazz

The Challenge

Challenge #1: Limited inventory means they must find ways to maximize revenue

Challenge #2: Ineffective and inefficient sales communication

Challenge #3: Missed sales opportunities

Challenge #4: Lack of visibility due to sales reps using personal phones to text

The Podium Solution

Podium Inbox

Podium Webchat

Podium Payments

Results and ROI

Result #1: Reduced response times to incoming messages to under 5 minutes

Result #2: 300% increase in revenue for in-game season ticket sales in one night

Result #3: Increase in email open rates

Result #4: Estimated 70% of sales now involve text messaging

Result #5: A more personalized customer experience

Result #6: A more personalized customer experience

Result #7: 200+ text transactions and 20+ hours saved in one month

Result #8: Doing more with fewer resources

Conclusion

Explore Related Products

Reviews

Webchat

Feedback

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The Challenge

The Podium Solution

Results and ROI

Explore Related Products

Reviews

Webchat

Feedback

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How an insurance agency in Chatham, New York – population 4,000 – become the state’s top-rated option.

Explore Related Products

Reviews

Webchat

Feedback

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Trane Technologies offers elite membership for dealers.

Podium gives dealers tools for a sleek customer experience.

Dealers who chose Podium experienced 8% more overall sales than those who didn’t.

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Reviews

This could have been the end of the story.
Luckily, it isn’t.