Get Up to 10x More Leads: See What’s New with Podium Phones
Welcome back to What’s New in Podium for April 2023. This month, we want to make sure you know about some exciting features now available with our new Phones product.
But First, What Is Podium Phones?
Podium Phones is our newest innovation—a VoIP Phone System that includes both desk and web phones, and offers the option of making and receiving calls from the Podium mobile app. When our customers combine the power of phone calls, text messages, and customer data in Podium, they get amazing results like:
→ Up to 10x more leads. Cha-ching!
→ Better information about who’s calling.
→ Calling, texting, and more—all in the same tool.
→ 20+ hours saved per month.
→ 40% of callers opting to text with you instead.
Communicating with customers over the phone is one of the main ways you do business. Now you can do it with a smarter Phone system made for local businesses. You’ll be able to drive more revenue from every call, give each customer personal attention, and do it all in one place.
Plus, your team will never need to use a personal number for customer calls again.
→ Request a demo of Phones
Check Out 4 New Capabilities in Podium Phones
Missed Call Auto Reply
Automatically send a text message reply to every missed caller.
When callers go to voicemail, they often hang up and call a competitor. In other words, the more calls you’re missing, the more sales opportunities you’re missing. With Missed Call Auto Reply, you can automatically and immediately send a text message to every missed caller and start a text thread instead so your customer knows you value them and you don’t miss out.
Call Recordings (Beta)
Certain U.S. customers can now try out Call Recordings!
One of the biggest problems with making and taking business calls on personal cell phone devices is that you have zero record of what was said to a customer and when. Even if your entire staff is already using a business phone system that does Call Recordings, you likely have to jump from system to system to find answers about past interactions. With Call Recordings, you can now keep a history of every call, accessible in the conversation thread and in your call history.
Customers with early access to this Beta release can turn Call Recordings on in their Settings.
Multiple Numbers Support
Manage all of your business numbers in one phone system.
The majority of local businesses have different phone numbers for different purposes, like Sales, Customer Service, the front desk, and more. Phones users can now port and manage all of their business phone numbers in Podium. This includes direct lines, forwarding lines, and shared lines. You can find this in your Phones Settings.
Self Serve Checkout
Certain U.S. customers* can now purchase Phones directly in the Podium browser application.
Getting started with Podium Phones has never been easier. If you’re not already a Phones user, but you want to be, you can click on any call button in Podium and use our self-serve checkout flow to set up your Phones plan and even order desk phones if you need them.
*If you have access to the self-serve checkout flow, you will see a prompt for it when you click on the call button on a contact.
From there, the checkout flow looks like this:
All of this adds to the existing capability of Podium Phones, including:
- Web Phones: Make, take, and route calls from your browser.
- Desk Phones Manage calls from a Podium desk phone.
- Mobile App: Make and take calls from your cell on Android or iOS.
- Prompt-to-Text: Give callers the option to text you instead.
- Call Forwarding: Forward phone numbers to separate devices.
- Call Routing: Route calls to the right person at the right time.
- Voicemail Transcriptions: Read voicemails right from the conversation in your Inbox.
- Call Window: See a caller’s full history in Podium—reviews, payments, notes, and more.
- Event Logging: Automatically capture every call alongside other customer activity.