--:-- Host: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have Cameron Tolman on, the Director of Business Development for Podium, and we have a tremendous conversation on all things social and automation and what's possible with choosing different tools and how to choose different tools. It's just a really good conversation from a company that I think is making some really good moves in our space.
--:-- Host: I use their web chat tool. There's a couple other pieces of functionality that I use as well, but the web chat tool has been a net gain. And I've said this multiple times, it's been a net gain for our agency. I was very—I don't want to say concerned—but it was something I was certainly tracking: whether or not when I added the web capture widget on the website, would it cut into the daily web forms that we get? We're getting, say, five to eight web form fills every day. And I was worried that we would see the same number of web form fills, just the web chat would get some of them. And that hasn't been the case. We've actually seen an increase of between one to three web chat fills every business day. So now we're looking at about 10 leads a day. And then you throw in some of the other avenues that we get on top of it. Right now, I think we're averaging, for the month, 9.7 leads a day. We've topped out at like 13 some days. It's been a net positive.
--:-- Host: I love the fact that it all works through text because we have almost 100% response rate. I just thought it would be cool to talk to somebody at Podium. Cameron's a great guy and came highly recommended inside as someone who could talk about the tool and talk about just the ecosystem in general and has been part of our space for a few years now. So I think you're going to enjoy this.
--:-- Host: Before we get there, I just want to say how much I enjoy doing this podcast and providing this for you guys. Work has been very hectic. Rogue is going very well. We're growing. We just added Matt Jaggard to the team. He's our first producer and is ramping up really quick. I couldn't be happier with his development just in the two weeks or so that he's been with us. It's been just absolutely wonderful. I feel blessed to have found him and Sarah Tremblay, who is our account manager, and everyone that we use at AgencyVA. We have two AgencyVAs, and their team has been tremendous. We're just growing so fast.
--:-- Host: I'm going to do my best to keep pumping out episodes every single week. I have some really cool interviews scheduled over the next couple weeks that'll hopefully get us back out ahead. But if for the next few months, things are a little sporadic or they don't always come out on Thursdays, if we're pushing some out on the weekends and stuff, I hope you guys will just bear with me through this period of what is fairly rapid and stressful. My brain—I don't have a lot of extra brain cycles and I'm doing my best. But I just want you to know if I do miss a week or something does seem a little out of sorts—I know I had hit every Thursday for a while—please know it's just because Rogue's in growth mode and we're developing new stories, and I'll share all those stories with you as I always have.
--:-- Host: So I just want to say thank you. Thank you for listening. I know this show isn't for everybody, and those of you who listen over and over again, I just appreciate you so much. And I want to give a big shout out to the State Association of Kentucky: Adam Sheridan, Katie Hines, Tara Pulver, for having me and Jack Wingate and Chris Klein in to speak. And unfortunately, Danny Kimball was supposed to be there too. She couldn't make it for a whole bunch of reasons. But she came in virtually, and it's always good to share mindspace with her as well. We just had an awesome leadership conference for Kentucky. It was just great to be back in person with all the serendipitous conversations and questions. It was tremendous. It felt so good to be back surrounded by insurance professionals. So I just want to give a big shout out to them and a thank you for having me in.
--:-- Host: I love what we do. I love this industry. I love sharing with you guys. It is such a great pleasure. And I hope—I'm not saying there will be any tumult—but if there is, or any kind of unscheduled this or that with the show, please know that I will make it up to you in spades. I promise. All right, with that, let's get on to Cameron.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Ryan, I'm jumping the gun here. I don't know that I've officially met you. I've seen you at shows. I've tried to catch you at times, but you're always the popular busy man. So good to meet you officially, though.
--:-- Host: Yeah, you too, man. You too. This is fun. I'm glad we can do this.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Same, yeah. Excited to be back. So just so you know, Ryan, I sold Podium for about two years in the insurance space. So I'm not an expert. I know a little bit of it, right? So I'll be able to get into a little bit of the weeds with you. But in October, I was promoted to a new role. I actually run a 165-person team on our sales development side. So we're kind of the motion that initiates the sales cycle, and we feed the role. I used to be in the account executive seat where we're more actually in the weeds with the business owners. So anyways, I'm excited to talk and share some insights. But yeah, just quick intro.
--:-- Host: Awesome. No, dude, I think it's great. We can go in a lot of different directions. I think where I'd like to start—because the people who are listening to the show right now, they've heard me do reads and they've heard me talk a little bit about some of the things that I've already experienced just in the short time that I've had Podium. Just the net increase in opportunities that I've seen, and the almost 100%—it's certainly in the 90s, I don't know that I have an official number, but certainly in the 90% response rate that I get from opportunities that are submitted through the chat function. So obviously I'm a fan and all that. But maybe just give people the high level, the 10,000-foot view of what this is. I know a lot of listeners have probably heard the name of the company, but there's probably a lot of people who just may not be 100% sure of what you guys actually do.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Yeah, for sure. It's rock and roll. You want it?
--:-- Host: Yeah, yeah, yeah, man, let's do it.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: 30,000-foot view. Podium is set out, Ryan, to capture the entire modern customer journey. The way we interact, the way we behave, the way we expect to make a purchase or ask a question to a business has changed completely since basically Amazon came out. Since Apple put the iPhone in the pocket, we expect convenience and we expect to make well-informed quick decisions and to be able to get what we want as quickly as possible. So Podium's vision and goal is to modernize the way that local businesses are seen, chosen, and connected to their customers.
--:-- Host: So I'm interested in the modern customer journey. The reason I'm interested in that is customer journey, customer experience. Like two or three years ago, you literally couldn't read an article online that had to do with business that didn't include UX, CX, or one of those terms. Which I think is good because it gets it on everyone's brain. And then everyone probably gets a little maybe numb to the concept, but it doesn't diminish its importance. So here we are in 2021. We've gone through an entire year. We've all been locked in our homes. And if the customer journey was changing, it changed incredibly rapidly over the last 12 months. So if you could, for as much as you're able to, I would love for you maybe to juxtapose just how far we've actually come in the last 12 months in terms of digitizing the customer experience. Because there was a lot of talk about it. And I think there were still a lot of people that are like, "I'm still a local business. People still walk in and hand us cash." And now, if you touch cash, you're killing grandmas. No one wants to do that. So how has that changed? And how far have we actually come to today?
--:-- Cameron Tolman: It was forced upon us, right? We've known that customers love convenience, but it was forced upon us and it was an overnight conversion from whatever you chose to adopt pre-pandemic from a convenience or an online world to 100%. I mean, businesses aren't in the office. Employees can't answer the phones. Systems aren't set up at home with the right technology, the right servers, the right security, the right internet access. The communication channels are all broken as soon as everyone goes home. But customers still need groceries, they still need insurance, they still need all the products that help them thrive and survive.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: What we saw—what was it? I think Starbucks did an article in China. It was one in eight orders pre-COVID that was done through their mobile app. And post-COVID, it's now seven out of eight orders that are ordered through their app. You still go to the store. It's just a quick pickup. But that force from one in eight to seven in eight going to a mobile ordering system is a pretty telltale sign of where we've gone and how people have ultimately just tasted convenience. And once you taste a better way, it's really hard to go back and wait in line for eight minutes for an overpriced coffee. It's now, "Hey, I can get it on my way through. Takes me 30 seconds. I don't have to waste time." Once we've tasted that and gotten the feel for convenience, we don't want to go back. Why would we sit on hold when we don't have to anymore? Why would we sit in traffic when we don't have to anymore?
--:-- Host: I've seen that in my own business. We've been open for about 14 months, and I've met one customer in person. One. And I think some people would say, "Well, yeah, most of your opportunities come digitally. That's fine." But I run a growing, existing operation. This is an ongoing operation that makes money and is adding employees, and we don't meet our customers in person. And it's not that I'm against it. Honestly, in the early days of this agency, I would have done whatever it took to put a policy in place to make some revenue. And just no one was asking for it. No one wanted it. No one was like, "Geez, I'd love to purchase insurance from you, except you won't come into my business." It wasn't even a thing. The ability to text, email, phone calls, Zoom calls—although most people didn't even want to Zoom—and we use video proposals. Those tools allowed us to be highly connected, very accessible, and deliver a high quality product.
--:-- Host: I think it's just interesting to me that here we are in 2021, seven out of eight coffees at Starbucks are purchased via app. You can go buy your pot in Massachusetts, pre-order, you drive up, they hand you a bag, you hand them some cash, you drive away, and it's legal. Yet for some reason, we still feel like certain types of businesses—insurance being one of them—is this hand-to-hand combat business. Not that that can't be done that way, but you certainly can't grow a business that way, in my personal opinion. You couldn't build an agency from scratch in hand-to-hand combat. I just don't think you can. And I'm sure there are agents listening that are pushing back. Push back if you want to on social—I'd love to hear your story—but man, I find it hard to believe that you can grow at the pace you need to with the carrier demands that they are today without digital tools.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Yeah. The hybrid model. Having brick and mortar is great for visibility. Anyone driving by that might be in the market, but that is like putting up a billboard on the freeway saying, "Hey, you need my product," when everyone's already got your product. I owned a small business before I came to Podium for about five years. Frankly, Ryan, I don't know where my agent officed. I don't know if they even had an office. I had no other communication with them besides email, phone call, and some texts here and there. Currently, the agency I've been with for four years—I don't know where the office is. I have no clue even where they are. They could be in another state. But I know they communicate with me and they make it convenient and they respond when I ask questions. So unique world we're in. And it really comes down to, do I need a hard good from you or not? Whether I'm going to find your store or not.
--:-- Host: Right. But even that—I look at the Amazon packages outside your door, or even not Amazon. If you buy direct from other retailers, my wife buys stuff from Etsy and Shopify stores and all these different things, and packages come. These are the clothes we wear. These are the knickknacks and bric-a-brac strewn around our home. I love in-person experiences. Next week from the time we're recording this—I don't know when this will go out—but at the time we're recording this, I'm speaking in person in Kentucky. It's my first in-person speaking gig since the vid dropped. And I can't wait. I literally can't wait to get there and just bump into other humans and have random serendipitous conversations about nerdy topics, whatever happens. But at the same time, I think those experiences become more of what they are—experiences—than a way of doing business. Does that delineation make sense to you?
--:-- Cameron Tolman: It does. Absolutely. And I find—I think we need to view them that way. I think they can be cultivated into experiences that people want to be part of. But as a necessity to business, it doesn't feel like that's ever going to be the case again—that we're ever going to have to go to the marketplace to exchange goods. We have a huge farmer's market right down the hill from where I live. It's amazing and fun and cool. People bring their dogs. The kids love it. But it's an experience. I don't need to buy my onions from that farmer's market. The store has the same onions in the grocery store. But it's the experience. I think that's really the way we need to think about it. Particularly to the audience that we're talking about: Is your agency going to be an experience when people go there? If the answer is yes—and I'm not saying that can't be done—you may have a gregarious, fun-loving agency that brings people in for all different things and people do enjoy coming there. If that's the case, more power to you. But your standard run-of-the-mill agency that's just an office that people work in—no one wants to come to that place.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: It's about making connections, building relationships. That's something I think we're all starving for right now. We're lucky enough, Ryan, to be back in office. There's about 200, 300 of us back in office. And it's incredible to feel that connection and that interaction. But it's not necessary. We can do business from anywhere, and you are, right? I don't know. It looks like you're home in your office.
--:-- Host: No, I'm in a corporate office, Cam. This is—can't you see from my backdrop that this is a very professional setting?
--:-- Cameron Tolman: It looks it. No, that's the beauty of it. We've made life convenient for every aspect of it. But I think those that have a great experience and can bring people into their office or can go out and see businesses and get their foot in the door are going to be probably really successful because people are starving right now for that interaction, that relationship, that bonding and rekindling that fire of, "It feels good to bump into people and have those serendipitous conversations." But again, when it comes to transaction, when it comes to getting down to business, when it comes to, "Hey, I need a certificate," or "Hey, I have a question about a policy," that should not be inconvenient. "Let me get my car. Let me drive to the office. Let me wait in the waiting room for somebody else." We're not there anymore.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: So when it comes to that transactional side, that's where Podium really is trying to help businesses—just speed up the convenience because consumers are so incredibly impatient. We want our food DoorDashed in less than 10 minutes. We want an Uber ride in less than five. We want our packages in less than 24 hours. And if I have to wait on hold to simply add a vehicle or to add a driver or get a certificate for a commercial work job I'm doing, that's just 2019. And now we're in 2021.
--:-- Host: It's funny. When I started this agency, there was really one core belief, and it's this concept of a human-optimized agency. I still say every time I say that that I hate that term. It's so unsexy. I need a sexy name for what I'm trying to do. But I believe kind of what you just said. There's this human side of business that I firmly believe in. I'm not the kind of business owner who philosophically believes that humans should be replaced. I do, however, believe the second half of what you said: that the transactional side of our business—the highly transactional side—does not need humans, or it needs less humans, or it needs humans to be less involved because there are certain aspects of our business where we just don't add value. We increase time and we increase the amount of trouble it takes to get something done.
--:-- Host: So how do we continue to mash the best part of humans with the best part of digital? And what's funny is I built my marketing plan around this concept, and I start pitching it to carriers and vendor partners, talking through what I'm going to do. And people are like, "Oh, this is revolution. This is completely different. I've never even heard of an agency like this. What do you mean you're not going to have a physical location? This is crazy." And I'm going, "If we were in any other industry, this is just how you do business." Pizza shop, clothing store. How many retail boutique clothing stores on every main street of every town? Yes, they have some walk-in people, but so much of their business is either they do an experience—like a wine tasting slash come try on clothes—or people are shopping online and purchasing their clothes, and they live down the street, and they're just mailing them or whatever.
--:-- Host: It is wild to me how it almost feels like—and I've never actually verbalized this, and I'd be interested in your take—it almost feels like an insecurity to me that our industry, the insurance industry in particular, has an insecurity that if the transactions are taken away from day-to-day work, that somehow we become replaceable. I don't see that. That thought doesn't even enter my consciousness. But maybe that's what it is.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Think about all the people that are Amazon sellers. They don't have any physical locations. They are simply buying and putting them into a warehouse and letting somebody else ship for them. It's just a shift. It's a behavior change. And I think so many people love that handshake, and I think insurance agents are people people. Is that how you say that? Makes sense? Persons? People person.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: No, interesting. You mentioned that. I heard of two things. One of my friends, a neighbor of mine, has a bookstore in a local mall. It's the craziest business idea. But he's in a town between two very big colleges. He does get a lot of college kids coming in and buying textbooks that they need for their classes. But outside of that, he's actually hired an extra employee who simply is listing their entire inventory on eBay, on Half.com, on Amazon.com. Their full job is to use the storefront as a warehouse. They list everything online. They get orders. She boxes them up and ships them right back out. They are literally using the storefront as basically a warehouse for shipping.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: I also heard here locally in Utah, there's a big warehouse going up. They're going to subdivide this warehouse into about 30 different cubicles per se, where you're going to have a chef and a team of cooks sitting in their section of this warehouse, simply cooking for DoorDash. So you now don't need a physical restaurant. You're only going to sell your food on DoorDash, and people can order whatever they want. DoorDash will just have a loop of drivers coming in and out of that place, delivering the food that 30 different restaurants are making out of one individual warehouse. It's pretty fascinating.
--:-- Host: Yeah. I feel like these are the concepts that we have to open our mind to. I think sometimes we forget—or "forgets" maybe the wrong word—but sometimes we look at that and say, "Well, that food can't be good. How good could that be?" And I'm like, some of these pop-up restaurants—what do they call the restaurants where you own a restaurant and I'll come in and kind of rent your kitchen or part of your kitchen for like a week and do DoorDash? Or even just all of a sudden there's a separate menu, a whole separate restaurant inside the same restaurant. It's these weird relationships, and the food is out of this world. And there'll be a pop-up for a week in this city, and then that chef will go to another town and do the same thing, rent a kitchen in a current restaurant. There's a term for it and I'm missing the term. But it's wild, the quality.
--:-- Host: If anything, I think the lack of physical space restrictions allows you to be more creative and focus more on your product versus all the headaches that come with just managing a physical space. I don't have to think about rent. I don't have to think about, "Is the Wi-Fi working? Do we have enough bandwidth? I got to shovel the front steps." That's just 30 more things that are taking up brain cycles that keep me from thinking about, "Okay, how do I attack this market? What's the marketing message here? How do I make sure this employee is happy?" To me, there's a freedom in it that allows you to almost be better at what you do.
--:-- Host: What's up, guys. Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast—whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform—I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in—men and women who've done incredible things—sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: And what strikes me—and I'll go back to kind of where you started the conversation—is the ability to grow at scale. You can grow with a physical location, absolutely. But to keep up in the market and compete with the advertisements that are hitting your potential policyholders who are scrolling through Instagram at night and seeing Zebra.com and Elephant.com and all the different online portals—these guys can hop in in a heartbeat, and all they're saying is "check rates, check rates, check rates." The ability to keep up with an economy that's sitting on their phone for five to six hours a day getting hit with opportunity after opportunity, hoping that someone drives by and says, "I have an agent, but that one looks intriguing"—it's just not scalable. And yeah, it's time for evolution. And that's what's been fun for me, Hanley, working in this industry—helping business owners who've been here for a while understand that the next phase is not really that intimidating. I think it's overwhelming thinking about SEO and UX and my website and how do we do all this? It's really not overly complicated if you have the right tools and the right systems in place.
--:-- Host: I agree with you completely. I do understand when someone's feedback to me is, "This is overwhelming," or "I'm just confused," or "It's tough to pick the options." If you're listening and you listen to the show all the time, sometimes I get frustrated with you guys because I feel like you sit on that and don't take any action, which bugs me because I'm an action-oriented person. But that's my personality. When I sit back, I can understand because it is a lot. It is a lot. Which tool is going to give me the most bang for my buck? Regardless—and I'm not saying you—but in general, I think people believe that insurance agents are just loaded with money. It's not always the case. You can make a lot of money in this industry, but oftentimes the margins can be thin. It's not like there's a tremendous amount of cash flow because it does take a lot of humans. Running an insurance agency is an expensive operation. This is not as straightforward an office operation as it looks. There is a lot to it. And all of it is a hundred dollars here, $50 here, $250 here. Gosh, if you're using Applied for agency management system, $10,000 a month here.
--:-- Host: Like it just—it can be overwhelming because you don't want to take on another hundred-dollar thing. That's more time. That's money. And you're at a teacher employee. Okay, so I think that's a very fair assessment.
--:-- That being said, I would believe you would be being intellectually dishonest if you were an agency owner today and you thought local was a defendable competitive advantage any longer. It's just not. It doesn't mean that can't be your shtick, it's just not defendable anymore. There's no longer a moat because—you know, whatever you want to say, we can jump the moat, or we got rocket packs to fly over the moat, or we can shoot our intercontinental ballistic missiles over the moat, whatever it is—that day has come because I can pop a pin on Facebook or Google or whatever into your backyard and start running ads to people who are in your quote-unquote local.
--:-- And that's why things like Podium and other tools—but that's why I find getting these tools that are straightforward. And if I can say anything about my experience thus far with Podium, it is an incredibly intuitive tool. And I do really like it from that standpoint. Some tools can be just a lot to manage. And Sarah and I picked it up like this—bam, makes sense. We did the half-hour demo and I—whoever did our demo, I'm going to forget your name, I apologize—you did a great job if you're listening to this. But just at half an hour, we picked it up and we've been running. And from that standpoint, choosing the right tools can make it less overwhelming.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Yeah. Now I was writing down a couple thoughts here. My advice, Hanley—of course I represent Podium and we'd love to talk with anyone that wants to learn more—but my advice, whether you're going to use Podium or a hundred other softwares, is only buy software that you're going to use. People are really haunted by technology and say it's so expensive because they've signed up for this tech stack that's 20 technologies deep and they just simply don't need half. They don't use the other half. And then all of a sudden technology is just expensive.
--:-- When we talk about scaling a business, technology is a tool. It's a resource. It's multiplying great people into having the capacity to do 5x of what they're able to do with email or with a phone call. And that's really what Podium's vision has been: how do we just operationalize communicating with Hanley or Sarah or whoever I need to at the agency without having to make it so laborious, without having to wait for you to get off of hold or to leave the voicemail and call me back?
--:-- So when you can adopt technology that's simple to use and that your team's actually going to use—that's my plug I'll make for the tech space. I just see too many agencies that have purchased and they wait 15 days and then say, "Oh, I've got other priorities," and they turn direction and they end up paying six months for a technology that's driven zero dollars of any impact. Technology needs a smart person behind it, but you don't have to be a genius. You've got to be able to send a text. When it comes to Podium, it's as simple as logging into your computer and sending a text message from your computer. That's why our tool is doing so well—because we have made it just incredibly simple.
--:-- So there's so many potential features that are amazing. And the one I always talk about, just because it's the easiest for people to understand—and again, I don't want to just focus on one feature because that's the only one, it's just easy to understand.
--:-- Host: I think you just made an incredibly important point that I want to highlight again. When we think about our usage of a tool, too often what I believe we do is we say, "Okay, the pie is 100. And if I take on this tech, what's going to happen is the tool is going to eat into the hundred, and now I don't need Sally anymore. Sally doesn't have a job, and I'm not getting rid of Sally, so I'm not going to take on this thing." It's a reductive way of viewing the tech.
--:-- Instead, what you need to say is, "Okay, we're going to take Sally—instead of the pool being a hundred units, it's now 500 units—but you don't have to add three more Sallys, or two Sallys and a John, or whatever. You get to keep the same team. You just have made the pie that much bigger." And that is the case study that I've used with you guys over and over, because it's been the very first thing that has really shouted out to me.
--:-- We average seven inbound form fills a day. That's our average form fills from SEO, which is a great number. I'm very proud of that. And content marketing works. So *nana* to all you people who have been listening to me for 10 years and haven't done content marketing. It's your fault. So that's great.
--:-- My initial concern when I first signed up with you guys was that the web chat feature—which I like that it's text, because we'll get to that in a second—I was worried that that would eat into the seven. That all of a sudden I would start adding five form fills and two web chats or something like that, and that my pool wouldn't get bigger, but that it would just change the way people chose. That hasn't been the case. We've actually averaged eight form fills now, two months later, and we now are averaging two web chat fills. So we've gone from seven—we've added one more form fill, but added two web chat outreaches. So net, we've gained two more contacts per workday, two more inbound contacts per workday, by adding this feature.
--:-- And then the even better part is when someone fills out your form. If you connect with them immediately, we have a pretty high contact rate because we have all the automations behind it with Agency Zoom. But with the text feature, the fact that you're doing a chat to text—when I text them back to their phone, their phone is getting buzzed with my response. I'm getting like a 10 out of 10 response rate from people, because it's right on their phone. They don't have to log back into the website. They don't have to go to their email. It's text. And that to me has been unbelievable, because for us, we're a volume play. We're a high-volume, small commercial agency. That's what we do. And we just can't beat it.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Yeah. I was speaking with a lady yesterday. She's just getting her business off the ground out of North Carolina. She had four customers come and fill out an email form on her website. She told me that she's been chasing them for two whole weeks, trying to get a single one of them to respond to the email. But the trick is, you go sit in her inbox with 700 other fresh emails that she got in the last week, and probably 10 to 15,000 total unread emails that are in there. You're just more noise. And if that pressing issue or that outreach to your business isn't top of mind right now, you're just one of 15,000 unread emails. There's no chance they're going to skim back through it.
--:-- We've always understood this around the modern customer journey and consumer behavior. We open 98% of all text messages within three minutes, versus the 22,000 unread emails. This is just in our hip pocket. It hits our watches. It hits our phones. It hits our computers. Text is everywhere. And it's obviously the number one communication method of today. So we've just put a spin on what consumers have traditionally not loved: either talking to a live agent who has no idea how to sell me a policy or service my policy, or waiting on hold for you and one of your agents to actually respond.
--:-- Here's a fascinating, more modern example of this, Hanley. When COVID hit, we're based out of Utah. We started offering our services to some of the government and some local restaurants and local companies that we knew well that were struggling. We actually reached out to the governor of Utah and let him know, "Hey, we would love to help with this whole pandemic side. We've got all these products. Is there anything we could do to offer?" And he said, "Our call center for questions about COVID, about quarantine, about the vaccine—we're backlogged for about two to three hours at all times, 24 hours a day. Our call center just cannot handle the volume of residents that are trying to get information."
--:-- So he said, "Hey, we've got a tool that can turn every one of your website visitors who want to connect with you into text." So we actually gave the state of Utah a free license to Podium, and they have cut their call volume down by about 80%. Consumers are now just going to the website and hitting, "Hey, I'll just send a text." And now that one agent that was able to handle one phone call at a time can take about seven or eight text messages at a time and just respond from their computer, typing like they would any other message or email. They're now just simply using Podium to text the entire state of Utah: "Here's when I can schedule you for a vaccine. Here's answers to frequently asked questions about quarantine." So you really just revolutionize the communication method when you give consumers what they prefer, which again is velocity and convenience.
--:-- Host: Yeah. There's no argument against it. I just don't—there's no argument against it. And I know some people will say, "Well, we write bigger business. It doesn't matter." Humans. It's always humans. And you're telling me that the CEO of a middle market company doesn't have a cell phone in his pocket or her pocket and doesn't text their kids or their spouse or their friends? You're out of your mind.
--:-- And the other side of it is humans have questions. Any of you who are running an agency of any size, think about how big your business is if you're listening to this right now. You're telling me you don't go on websites and look stuff up? You don't do that? You outsource everything—your personal assistant or your EA or someone in your office does everything for you? You never go to the computer and Google something and try to find a solution? Of course not. So why would every customer base potentially not use these types of communication methods? It's not just relegated to smaller stuff or personal lines.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Yeah. And what I'd argue is even if you do have an EA, even if you do delegate someone to do everything for you, where are they going? They're trying to find a convenient way of getting your stuff done. So ultimately, whether it's the business owner or their assistant or their office manager, they want the same experience that every other human wants. So it's been fascinating to see—you give customers what they want and make it easy for the business to handle it on the other side, it's explosive growth. I'm not here to toot our horn, but we've touched one in two cell phones in the United States. We're really excited about the influence that this technology has had.
--:-- Host: Wait, that's true? You've touched one in two cell phones in the United States?
--:-- Cameron Tolman: We have.
--:-- Host: Wow. That is insane.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Yeah. There's 90,000 businesses using Podium right now. And we touch the whole customer journey, Hanley. So whether the customer is just looking for, "Hey, I need a new agency—I got dropped, or I'm moving to a new state, or my agent's unresponsive and doesn't take good care of me, or I run a really unique business that this guy can't write"—where do they go? They go looking for you online. And we are there from the second they look for you online until they've renewed their policy for 30 years. We touch every ounce of that customer journey: from finding you, connecting with you from Google, connecting with you on Apple Maps, connecting with you on Facebook, connecting with you on your website, texting your business phone number, renewal of your policy, updates, changes, payments, promotional messaging. Our platform really does in one portal touch pretty much the whole customer journey. And that's really the vision we've set out for.
--:-- Host: Yeah, no, and it's easy to use. And that's the part that I really like about it too—that I don't need to be confused by another piece of technology. So if it makes it simple and straightforward, it's a no-brainer.
--:-- Hey, man, this has been awesome. I appreciate you and your time. I have no doubt that there are people listening to this who want to learn more or get a demo. If someone's going, "I've been thinking about it. I've heard about it. It's time. I want to at least do a demo"—where do they go? What's that next step?
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Yep. So I run a team of about 170 people that would love to talk to anyone. Go into podium.com. You can simply throw your name, phone number, and email in there, and we can reach out to you and schedule something to show you something custom. We have some basic information in there, some demo videos that can give you a little high-level taste of it. But we really do want to show you customized ROI around exactly in your target market: what kind of traffic could you expect to see increase? What kind of communication changes can we make specifically on your website? We'll look at your Google My Business page with you and look at it from a mobile perspective as well, where 96% of Google traffic starts on a mobile device. We've got to understand how do you operate in your market.
--:-- So yeah, go to podium.com, fill out that form. We'll get in touch with you and we can schedule a meeting and walk you through the solutions. We do have something for everyone. Our new CRO, he actually came from Lyft. He's helped us really understand some new aspects of business that we've never been able to tread in. We have some packaging and pricing that we've recently released that literally makes Podium available for anywhere from free to—I mean, some businesses pay us a thousand bucks a month. So there really is something there for everybody. If anyone wants to give it a shot, you can try it even for free.
--:-- Host: Yeah, guys. And if you want to see what it looks like and text me—please don't blow me up—but you can see if you go to roguers.com, you'll see the web chat form. I've played around with a bunch of different messaging there and I test all different messaging, just to see what grabs people's attention.
--:-- But yeah, I think you guys are doing good work and I'm excited for what's coming. And as you guys evolve, you've been a big help to Rogue. So I just want to say thanks. And I appreciate your time, man.
--:-- Cameron Tolman: Thank you, Ryan. It's great to be here. Hopefully we added some value to the listeners. Hope you all have a great day. Thanks so much.
--:-- Host: Thanks, man. Cheers.
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