Siriusware seems best suited for organizations that are working with many programs and events that are running at different times. You are able to easily check registration for different events at the same time which is very helpful. If you have staff that are focusing just on data analysis and reporting then Siriusware would be very useful for them. On the flip side if you need to train seasonal staff on the point of sale and process multiple sales in a quick amount of time then this is not the best fit. The interface can be clunky and slow especially when you have internet problems.
Podium is well suited for several types of businesses. If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, Podium would be a great way for you to ask that customers leave you a review online sharing their awesome experience. For medium to large businesses, Podium review invites can be automated through the company's customer management system, allowing the use of Podium to be simple and not timely, even with a large customer base. It may not be appropriate for a large company to manually send out individual review invites
Maintains conversations indefinitely, so we are able to go back to confirm details from conversations.
Provides the ability for our company to have a 'team' messaging platform where we can communicate with one another via single person to a single person, groups where we can add/subtract members of the group... this is invaluable to our organization.
Until today(!), we could 'share' or forward a message to one another; oddly, that feature disappeared just today, so I'm hoping it's a glitch!
Support is non-budging, "our way or no way" and will not consider options, adapt, compromise, etc.
Company seems so big (too big) that one department does not know what another is doing. Items advertised by sales were impossible from the perspective of the implementation team and then the follow-up support staff had little idea of anything that happened previously.
In some instances Siriusware (Accesso) support will not touch anything without someone in IT letting them in and waiting while they fix it. Other times a support agent will go rogue and completely change a user's set up with no previous discussion or follow-up on what they did/changed. Leaving us to figure out problems later.
They often will not listen or even try to understand special circumstances (many of which were shared earlier in the process) and simply say "we only do it this way!" This has left us to figure out our own solutions many times!
Account manager communications: I had been asking my Podium account manager for integration with our CRM tool for over 8 months before my account manager fell silent. After another 6 months, I proactively reached out only to find out that the integration had been in Beta for months and 8 other companies had already integrated. It was frustrating that my account manager did not remember a key request and make the Beta available to me the minute that it was open.
Again, Podium has been so wonderful in the year and a half we have been using it, we are able to integrate it with our CRM and use alot of the available features. The most helpful has been getting TONS of reviews on MULTIPLE sites through Podium!
While giving our clients the ability to leave a review was there, we had much worse results and got fewer reviews through the Podium portal than we did by sending our clients simple email requests, or simply having our service staff ask for a review while still on the clients' job sites.
I have to send an email to get information. They have a chat system but I end up having to go through my rep for account questions. It was a little frustrating to not have a direct phone number to call with questions. I would like to see a helpline added.
Any POS implementation is a lot of work, and a lot of learning for Admin, IT, management, end users, etc. This was selected by a consultant we hired. We have many regrets regarding the process, but are now kind of stuck and it is basically getting the job done. It is not ideal, but the people who chose this have learned a lot in the process.
in my opinion, Podium is garbage. I would NOT have selected it except for the person we trusted to help us make a decision for a VoIP solution vehemently recommended it to us, telling us he used it himself for his e-bike shop, and was a 'Podium slut'. I would later learn that he received credits on his own Podium account for referring business to them.
Its easy to scale to different departments as needed. We initially began using it to solve one problem and as new features became available it was easy to scale this and include other departments who could benefit from its tools
Well, it's job security for me, but negative for the organization, as I spend a LOT of time cleaning up data that comes into our CRM from Siriusware, and fixing issues that could have been avoided. This is a needless expense for my company, but it is what it is.
Must have wifi. In our remote properties this can be problematic.
A lot of training seems to be needed for accurate use by the end user.
Use of Podium has increased the star rating on various review sites for all of our dealerships using the product.
Use of Podium has increased the volume of new monthly positive reviews on various review sites for all of our dealerships.
While we can't measure the impact that positive reviews have on car shoppers, we know that it influences them and we believe that it is a factor for some people in making the decision to visit the dealership. Some customers have come in and said they read our reviews and wanted to give us a shot. Others have even asked for a specific salesperson who's name has come up in positive reviews, without having ever met or spoken with that salesperson.
