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Podium Vs. Reputation.com

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“Our reputation doesn’t mean a thing,” said no one, ever. People are not going to line your pockets with hard-earned cash if they think you stink. Podium and Reputation both offer a way to manage customer sentiment about your business. We feel Podium is better because it focuses on much more than reputation—you can generate reviews, do social media marketing, improve sales conversions with text messaging, and so much more. 

Podium Compared to Reputation.com

Podium is a messaging platform that takes your business from “who are you?” to household name. Podium helps your reviews come in like clockwork and get found on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and more. Plus, you’re not using a reputation management software that just pumps out reviews for you—Podium ties together customer messaging, marketing, payments, and reviews in one simple-to-use platform. Click here to start with Podium for free

Reputation.com is a reputation booster in every sense. Your online reputation is managed with seamless ease. You can also take every comment and turn it into a competitive advantage. They don’t make getting reviews as easy as Podium does, but they take any feedback you get, analyze it, and make a plan to improve your reputation with it. Reach out to Reputation.com and get your free demo to see its strengths in action.  

More Top Reputation Management Software Platforms

We’ve looked in-depth at the reputation management platforms available and what each piece of software can do. With our research, we created a post that lets you see in a glance the best options and what they’re best at. 

After you compare Podium and Reputation.com, take a look at the top list as well. It will help you gain an even better understanding of these unique providers in context of the software category and in what aspects they rise above the rest of the pack. 

Where Podium Shines

Generating reviews: We all know getting five-star reviews can be hard, especially when you are just starting out. What makes Podium so worth your time is how easy it is to get people to give you quality reviews. 

You can do that with the messaging service they provide. It’s no different than sending a regular text, but you can send links within the message. Those send customers to a simple mobile-friendly form so the review is done in real time and while fresh in your customers mind. 

You know how much better your reviews are when it’s not given four days later? 

This easy-to-apply approach to getting reviews can also be automated. So, you can put your feet up and watch the reviews come rolling in after purchases or customer service interactions. 

Team chat: Teams crumble like dry leaves when communication is severed. If you want to keep things from getting confusing, everyone needs to be clear on what’s going on. Podium makes collaboration on the same channel easy. Everything is all in one place, in one inbox. 

Group messaging, private messaging, and reviews that customers need assistance with are all available in your inbox. You never miss out on a critical issue that needs your attention. Each team can focus on what matters most to them and they won’t have to sift through hundreds of comments in order to find it. 

Video chat: Don’t you just wish you could just show what you mean, when you’re trying to explain something over the phone or chat? 

Well, with Podium, you can. If you’re in the car repair business, for example, use it to give your client a quick update on how things are looking. Or, if you’re in the software business, share your screen with a prospect to show them how your platform works in real time. 

You can use video chat millions of ways. Closing a sale, fixing a misunderstanding with an order,  or anything else. If your customer or prospect needs a little facetime, all you have to do is send a quick link and they can video chat with you with no software to download or any complicated setup. Just a normal face-to-face with software they are already used to using. 

That personalized attention is something they’re sure to remember and love. 

Payments: Say you have a prospect you’re talking to on Podium They have questions, your team answers them and even over delivers. The prospect is ready to buy, do you just hope that they will go to your website later to make the payment?

We wouldn’t. Get the payment in the moment by sending over a simple link that brings them to the checkout page. You can even send coupon codes and other marketing materials to push them over the buying edge. 

This feature makes getting payments easier than ever. Plus, for past due payments you can just send a quick text as a reminder with a link to get paid. 

Webchat to text: This makes turning visitors with inquiries about your site into leads. Take the conversation from your website to SMS messaging and finish the sale on a platform they’re more comfortable with. 

Not only is this good for business, but it also makes your customers and prospects more engaged because they are using a messaging service they are used to. You can also leverage this to set up appointments, provide support, or answer questions. 

Where Podium Falls Short

Customer support: When you need help from Podium, you can email support and you’ll get assigned a rep. They usually will call you within 24 hours, which is not that prompt. And, sometimes, you can wait days or maybe not even get a call back without having to email again. 

Custom pricing: Most people want to know what they will pay before committing. A lot of messaging software providers offer services with predictable, flat rates on their websites. But Podium requires you to message them and wait to hear back about a ballpark figure you will pay. 

Those are their words on the pricing page, not ours. 

We don’t like that there is no clarity on how they will respond, either. WIll it be a call or an email? That overall uncertainty is not a great customer experience. 

Enterprise ability: Podium is limited in terms of upper-echelon reputation services. They don’t do a particularly good job getting you listed in the places customers will find you. Many other providers, like Reputation.com, take listing and enterprise reputation services more seriously and offer a much better suite of services than Podium can deliver with just their software. 

Lead organization: Having all of your messaging in one place can be great because you don’t have to look in five different apps to communicate with different people. But when you have all the conversations, reviews, and leads in one place, things can get a bit cramped. 

Several users expressed concern about having a way to organize leads in the platform, particularly looking for a way to separate them so they can go to specific members of the team. There’s no way to automatically set queues in Podium.

There is other software on the market that can separate the type of leads that come in through automation. But, they might not offer all the things Podium provides you in other areas. So what’s most important is up to you. 

Where Reputation.com Shines

Business listings: Reputation.com gives you a guarantee that your business will be found, making sure your business gets better visibility in search results. They regularly update your listings so Google is always displaying the most accurate information. All of this leads to more views and higher conversions. 

And it’s easy to get started. WIth the quick-start process Reputation.com offers, you’re up and running fast. And your listings are all synced, so you get real-time updates for better visibility. 

Reputation.com only focuses on the channels that matter to your business and industry. You can be everywhere your customers are looking online and not worry about listing boards that aren’t relevant to your brand. 

Social suite: An online social presence is more important today than it’s ever been for businesses. One bad comment or review without a speedy follow up can tank your reputation quickly. 

Reputation.com allows you to listen everywhere you have accounts and use social tools that help you solve your customer base’s concerns  immediately. You can track and send messages across all your social channels. 

Plus, you can run national and local social campaigns with ease through Reputation.com. Broadcast your content across multiple social media channels with their cross-publishing capability.

Location pages: You can brand your individual locations’ pages so you stand out in search results and suck in more sales. Plus, it keeps information relevant to where searchers that find your pages live. 

Reputation.com allows you to publish pages across multiple domains with its publisher automation tools. You save time when things need to be updated, instead of going page by page. You can also make your pages searchable on maps with the Reputation.com locator program. 

Competitive reporting: Detailed reporting with actionable insights help you know much more than your competition and serve your customers better, because you understand them better than you did before. Reputation.com delivers incredibly deep reporting on your brand health and that of your competitors. 

Track how you stack up to them in one simple-to-manage dashboard. Imagine having a mole in your competition’s boardroom, leaking all the goods back to you on what their customers hate, love, and want to be better? How would that impact your business bottom line? Reputation.com gives you that power. 

Message resolution tracking: Texting your customers and prospects is the hot new thing. A lot of platforms allow webchat to text, but what many other reputation management providers fail at is tracking problems and making sure those issues are handled by the best possible reps. 

Reputation.com has solved this with resolution tracking. Now, you can sift through your reviews and issues with a filter, assign inquiries to the right team, and send them off to be handled. This makes sure every request on inquiry is responded to, which leaves no room for the dreaded review of “It’s been three days and I haven’t heard back.” 

Enterprise-focused and capable: What makes Reputation.com so good for mid-size and enterprise businesses is all of the options available for listing services as well as its ability to keep every interaction in one platform. They focus on the customer experience from start to finish.

As well as being better for businesses that need custom reporting, Reputation.com provides prescriptive recommendations to get better while tracking progress—a personal trainer for your reputation. If you truly want to be in command of your customer’s end-to-end experience, Reputation.com is a great service to utilize. 

Where Reputation.com Falls Short

No payment messaging: With all that Reputation.com offers, they don’t have the ability to ask for payments through text messaging. Fortunately, that feature is in beta (so it’s coming soon), but Podium is running this feature at full force already and users love it. Whether you’re closing a sale or need a late payment made good, this feature can be wielded in countless ways. 

Social ads: Though setting up social ads inside the Reputation.com platform is meant to be a time saver, they don’t do this particularly well. The idea is stellar, but the execution is a bit lacking. 

Setting up Google and Facebook ads can be confusing on the Reputation.com platform. It would be helpful if they make this integration easier down the road and expand the range of channels they support for social ad creation. 

The Final Verdict on Podium Compared to Reputation.com

Both Podium and Reputation.com offer pricing feedback after an inquiry. 

For Reputation.com, you can request a demo or just call them at the number listed on the website to call for more information. With Podium, you’ll fill out a web form and wait for your custom quote.

Both aren’t ideal, because it’s hard to know whether the investment will be worth it ahead of time.  But this is typical for reputation management services and software, since they’re rarely one-size-fits-all solutions. 

These are two reputation management platforms that excel in different areas. 

Podium is loved by small business owners and is the clear winner in our eyes for local businesses and early-stage companies. They make it easy to generate reviews, engage with customers, and take and request payments through SMS. 

You’re even able to send out texting campaigns to generate sales and growth. Podium is just an easy to use engagement and review management masterpiece.   

Reputation.com is more for the bigger businesses, specializing in making sure large and enterprise-grade organizations are always easily found online. You can respond to reviews in a blink and generate more traffic and prospects with localized, custom-branded page listings. 

They also have robust tools for texting leads and customers, social media reputation, presence, and campaign management, and overall customer experience oversight.

Reputation.com is more about end-to-end management of and visibility into each customer’s journey. This is overarching, robust reputation management. 

It just seems more users need something just as reliable but less complex. Podium fits the bill for that and is a slightly better choice overall.

If you’re more curious now about reputation management and are looking for in-depth explanations about each feature that really matters, read our article on the top reputation management software providers and take a peek at our list of the top products below.

  1. Brand24 – Best for most
  2. Nextiva – Best for advanced social media monitoring
  3. NetReputation – Best for building a complete online presence
  4. InternetReputation.com – Best for individuals
  5. Podium – Best way to get more five-star reviews
  6. Reputation.com – Best for multi-location businesses
  7. Mention – Best for social media focused companies
  8. Swell – Bet for growing local businesses
  9. Chekkit – Best for service-based businesses
  10. Chatmeter – Best for chains and franchises

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