Serious concerns about Podio support
I share the serious concerns about Podio support that many others have posted about recently. I started using the software in August 2017; and expanded it to several other areas of my company in Nov 2017. At that time I upgraded to the most expensive paid plan. I expected upon doing this I would receive faster replies to support tickets, but I absolutely *have not*.
Podio is great software, but I am having serious doubts about making my entire business rely on it. I have a couple of support tickets that have not been answered in over a month. There is also no one from Podio regularly active on this forum; and seems even less so in recent months. There also aren't many other users participating in the forum, which makes me wonder if others have given up on Podio... .
So far, my support inquiries were not critically urgent, but I do need a response in order to move forward on certain improvements I want to make in my Podio setup. I am really afraid what would happen if one day I do have a critically urgent issue. I am not at all confident that Podio staff would reply in a timely manner, or at all.
Two other factors that make me really not trust Podio:
- Their shutdown of the Beagle proposal platform with very little warning or explanation to users a couple of years ago. I am very afraid they could do the same with Podio one day. I was a Beagle user and am still upset I didn't receive a better explanation on why they shut it down. They also did nothing to give former users information on how to migrate to another system; or at least recommend another platform (It could have also been an opportunity for a referral partnership and Podio integration.)
- The recent service outage. I understand that these things can happen, and perhaps they did their best in the situation. However, the communication with clients was not satisfactory. Some technical explanation was sent out about what went wrong and how they fixed it. That's great and I appreciate the transparency. However, what really matters to most of us is that the company is willing to make it up to us when they screw up. Making a sincere apology and perhaps even a special offer in light of the hardship that the outage caused us would have gone a long way. For some people the outage cost thousands. They really could have been more sympathetic and gone further to try to make it up to us. Podio seriously needs to hire some professionals who know something about client satisfaction.
That said, I understand that Podio wouldn't offer the level of support of much more expensive software like Salesforce, where you even get a dedicated account manager. Still, I would expect something at least on par for other SaaS in the same price range; and I have to say in my experience Podio is really at the bottom. Still.. considering the affordability of Podio relative to its functionality, I I would be very willing to pay something extra for priority support. However, it doesn't seem that the option exists.
Does anyone know - is there a third-party company that offers support that I can pay for? Has anyone done this and do they recommend it? I want to know that I have a lifeline in case I have any issues that go above and beyond my level of know-how.
And, Podio, if you can't provide us better support, can you at least promise to communicate with us about the situation of the company and ensure us that Podio has a long life ahead of it? My own livelihood depends on it.
Thank you.
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Official comment
Hi Shaheen Michelle,
Thank you for posting your feedback. I did see you posted a few different comments, we have an approval flow before posts go live, (to ensure we don't see spam in the Help Centre as we have seen in the past), which is why you didn't see the post immediately.
As a part of our incident report earlier in January, we did include a apology to our customers, although I know it might not help a lot:
We do want to apologize to our customers for the huge impact this event had for you, your team and your business. We know you depend on us for a reliable and available service at all times and it is our highest priority to live up to your expectations and improve our availability in the future. We will conduct additional in-depth analysis in the following week to ensure we learn from this event.
In order to improve, we are evaluating our risks and policies and will implement new processes the following days and weeks that will prevent a similar incident in the future. We are still pursuing the completion of the immediate actions required to restore service fully and to complete the analysis needed to be the reliable platform you need for your team and business long-term.
Our goal is to improve performance and reliability for you and this is the highest priority for us. Please read more here:
https://blog.podio.com/2018/01/10/2017-year-in-review/
We have partners worldwide that offer support in case you are willing to pay for a personal support experience:
https://podio.com/webforms/2716831/200839
I will also ensure we follow up with your request directly.
Thanks again for sharing.
Cheers,
Sara - PodioComment actions -
Thanks for your reply, Sara, and for sharing the Year in Review article. It's good to have an idea of the Podio roadmap and to know that your team is actively working to improve the platform.
In terms of my concerns about customer support, could you please let us know - what is Podio's policy on ticket response times? Perhaps when we submit a ticket we should get an auto-reply warning us that it may take 2-3 weeks for a response. You could also explain that this is how you're able to keep Podio affordable, and those who would like on-demand support should consider contacting a third-party Citrix Podio Partner. That would at least manage our expectations and prevent people from being frustrated that they didn't receive a quick response.
About the incident report, yes, I read that message and it was definitely better than nothing! But, it was quite impersonal. You might try showing your human side, and also take more responsibility. Something like: "It was our fault; we screwed up and we are really, truly sincerely sorry for not being prepared for this situation" along with some details not just on the steps you took - but the reasoning behind them. It would also help to focus on what developments we can look forward to in the future from Podio, rather just saying "sorry, we're fixing it, won't happen again."
Similarly, the "This old dog has had it's day" message announcing the end of Beagle was an extremely unceremonious way to shut down a service. Users would be able to swallow these things much easier if we had more explanation on what really happened and how it ties into the strategy for Podio.
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We strive to be able to respond to tickets within the same day in weekdays however we currently have a bit of a backlog and are working to get back to former standards. We agree it is not acceptable to wait 2-3 weeks for an answer. I hope we can improve this experience for you again.
Thank you for the feedback related to Beagle.
/Sara - Podio
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