How to Automate Podium

Podium's Inbox holds every customer conversation a local business has

A customer texts a jeweller at nine in the evening to ask whether a ring resize is done, and another pays a repair deposit the next morning from a link in a text. At a shop running Podium, both arrive in one Inbox, along with webchat, phone calls and messages from the shop's social accounts.

Podium sells itself to local businesses as an AI Employee that answers calls and messages at any hour and books appointments, and its site names four markets: auto dealerships, home services, aesthetics and wellness, and retail. At a dealership the Inbox connects to the DMS, and Podium's AI books service appointments straight into it. At a jeweller the Inbox is the counter's screen for most of the day, and sales associates on the shop floor answer threads from the Podium mobile app.

Customers text questions that only the POS can answer

The texts ask whether a repair is back from the workshop or a special order has come in. Each answer sits in the POS, so the associate leaves the thread, opens the POS, finds the repair ticket and types its status back into Podium.

The threads wait on a busy Saturday. Conversations and missed calls from the morning are still open at lunch, and a customer who asked on the webchat at ten hears back after three.

Last week's unpaid Text to Pay links need matching to the orders they were for before the manager can chase them, because some of those customers paid at the counter instead. The purchase history in the POS shows which good customers have not been back in months, and in a busy season nobody at the counter has time to read it.

Podium's automations fire on what Podium can see

Missed Call Automation texts a caller who did not get through, and Review Automations send review invitations with reminders. In the Inbox, Automatic AI Replies answer from the business's own context, and the AI Employee books and confirms appointments at any hour, with escalation rules for when a person should step in.

Integrations add events from other systems. A Shopify store's orders can trigger order-status texts and review requests, and The Edge, a jewellery POS, connects to Podium so that review and feedback requests go out after a sale without anyone sending them.

The trigger is always something Podium can see: a message, a missed call or an event from a system it connects to. A POS outside that list holds repair tickets and purchase history that Podium never receives, and the AI Employee, which works from the records it has been given access to, cannot read them either. A question about one customer's repair still goes to a person, who leaves the thread to look it up.

Replies in Podium can carry the repair status from the POS

The customer who texted at nine about the ring resize could have the workshop's due date by ten the next morning. The reply would already quote the repair ticket, so the associate on the counter checks the date and sends it.

The front desk could keep every conversation still waiting past the shop's response window as a card on its Trello board, longest wait first. The manager could open a list of last week's unpaid Text to Pay links already matched to their orders in the POS. A customer who settled up in the shop drops off it, and each of the rest has a short reminder waiting unsent in its thread.

Each associate could open Podium at the start of the week to unsent messages for good customers they served who have not been in for three months, each written around what that customer bought last. A store whose POS has no Podium connection could release review requests for the week's closed sales from a queue, which stores on The Edge already get from the integration.

The associate on the counter sends every reply from Podium

Jewel360 runs in any modern browser, so its repair tickets open on the same counter computer as the Podium Inbox. WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. Before the shop opens, it reads the waiting threads and the unpaid payment requests, looks each customer up in the POS and writes a reply into the right thread without sending it.

Those replies sit unsent in each customer's thread in the Podium Inbox, and the associate on the counter decides which ones go and in what words.