Podium
AI employee for dealership messaging, reviews and calls
About
Podium's AI BDC — an AI employee called Jerry — answers inbound dealership leads across text, webchat, Facebook, Instagram and email, covers inbound calls 24/7, and books service appointments into Xtime and Tekion. FordDirect made Podium's AI solution available to Ford dealers and Lincoln retailers nationwide, and Podium says 6,000+ dealerships use it. Pricing is quote-only (a pricing FAQ lists 300 included Voice AI minutes a month with overages), and because Podium is a multi-industry product, it works alongside your CRM and DMS rather than replacing them.
What it can do
- AI Employee lead response across channels
- 24/7 AI call answering
- Service scheduling into Xtime and Tekion
- Review request automation
- Unified SMS/webchat/social inbox
- Operator staff assistant (approval-gated)
Setup
- Request a demo and quote from Podium
- Connect your CRM, DMS and scheduling tools (Xtime, Tekion, DealerSocket, CDK)
- Train the AI Employee on your dealership's voice and inventory
- Enable text, webchat, social and voice channels
- Monitor conversations and approve Operator actions
Prerequisites
Dealership or local business; CRM/DMS integrations optional.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: FordDirect partnership and 1,800-dealer results from PR Newswire releases; 6,000+ dealerships and AI Employee results are company-reported; Pricing is quote-only; plan prices ($399/$599) come from independent reviews, not the vendor; Multi-industry product; dealer fit depends on CRM/DMS integrations. License: Commercial SaaS; quote-based pricing, annual contracts typical..
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 8.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 5.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 8.0/10
- · FordDirect partnership and 1,800-dealer results from PR Newswire releases
- · 6,000+ dealerships and AI Employee results are company-reported
- · Pricing is quote-only; plan prices ($399/$599) come from independent reviews, not the vendor
- · Multi-industry product; dealer fit depends on CRM/DMS integrations
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.