Podium changes how local businesses — from HVAC shops to dealerships and medspas — capture and convert demand using AI agents. Want the result? More appointments, more revenue, and happier customers without hiring extra staff.
How they got here
After 11 years working alongside small and medium businesses, Podium saw a clear opportunity: a lot of sales are lost outside business hours or because responses are slow. They started in 2020 with targeted fixes like spam filtering and lead enrichment, and gradually evolved into a conversational agent they call 'Jerry'.
'Jerry' talks naturally, follows each business's policies, and completes concrete actions like booking appointments or doing follow-ups. People adopted it fast — some customers even walk into stores asking for 'Jerry', thinking it's a person.
Concrete results and why they matter
Since 'Jerry' launched in March 2024, Podium has deployed tens of thousands of agents and reports 300% year-over-year growth in AI-driven revenue. Their agents are active in 10,000 businesses and they claim influence over billions in revenue.
Why does it work? Because they respond fast and 24/7. Agents typically reply in under a minute, while average human response times exceed two hours. Podium found that the best converters reply in around two minutes, but with AI available, opportunities that arrive outside business hours no longer slip away.
Real examples:
- An HVAC shop in Texas landed 15 extra emergency repairs in one month thanks to immediate replies.
- A Midwest auto group increased after-hours bookings by 80% and captured sales that used to go to competitors.
- A medspa owner in Utah says 'Jerry' answers in minutes and follows up the next day if the customer doesn't reply, which turns into more high-value appointments.
What Podium did to make 'Jerry' work for SMBs
Podium made three key choices to scale accurate responses while keeping each business's tone and policies:
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Vertical baselines + business-level tuning: they deliver agents already optimized for sectors like auto, home services, and beauty. Then each business adjusts tone and flows to match their brand, without needing engineers.
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Outcome-oriented orchestration: 'Jerry' uses sales and service playbooks to qualify leads, handle objections, and close jobs, and escalates to humans when needed.
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Industrial-grade evaluation: before every launch they run thousands of production-like scenarios. In head-to-head tests, GPT-5.1 won 65.4% of comparisons, had 41% lower cost per conversation, and responded 39% faster than competitors.
They also allowed natural language adjustments. For example, a medspa can ask the agent to say 'injectable' instead of 'fillers' and the change applies across all channels without touching code.
Operational impact and average metrics
Numbers that show real business impact:
- Average revenue up to ~30% higher.
- Lead conversion rises on average 45%.
- New roles emerge like AI operations leads and customer experience specialists, and call center roles get redesigned.
It's not just automation: it's improving how you sell and serve. For businesses without engineers, this means 'hiring' an employee that follows natural-language instructions and performs repeatable tasks.
How they use AI internally
It doesn't stop at the agent. Non-technical teams use ChatGPT Enterprise and APIs to build onboarding flows, conversation playbooks, and role-play scenarios in hours, not weeks. OpenAI remains Podium's preferred model provider because, they say, it offers the best balance of reasoning, instruction-following, speed, and cost.
What's next
Podium is already expanding agents across the entire customer operations cycle to keep driving local growth. The idea is simple: democratize AI so the impact isn't just for big companies, but for the corner business too.
Can you imagine losing fewer sales because you replied faster? For many business owners, that's stopped being just an idea and became a tool.