SoftShark

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the AI chatbot development of Casa Concord | Cubed Business | Chat Transfers | Uchati

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our company provides insurance solutions through Cubed Insurance, AI-powered tools like ChatACA, business process outsourcing (BPO) services by Uchati for efficient customer service, and Casa Concord, a home services concierge platform connecting homeowners with service professionals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftShark to accomplish?

• Develop a custom chatbot with the ability to train using custom materials with minimal engineering effort.
• Integrate a vector database with embeddings to enable retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and advanced matching functionality based on state, status, bid amount, and customer request relevancy.
• Configure bot intents to align with business needs and user interactions.
• Optimize the chatbot’s performance for efficient and relevant responses.

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftShark?

Referral

Why did you select SoftShark over others?

• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from SoftShark were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

SoftShark was hired to develop a custom chatbot capable of training with minimal engineering effort, integrating a vector database for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), configuring bot intents, implementing advanced matching functionality (state, status, bid amount, and customer request relevancy), and seamlessly integrating the chatbot with our existing user interface. Key deliverables included functional chatbot deployment, integration with current systems, and documentation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The measurable outcomes included successful deployment of the chatbot with seamless integration into our existing UI, enabling efficient training with custom materials.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

SoftShark demonstrated excellent project management throughout the engagement. Diana was highly responsive to our needs, ensuring open communication and prompt adjustments when required. 

What was your primary form of communication with SoftShark?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What impressed us most about SoftShark was how easy they were to work with. They were incredibly flexible, always willing to adapt to our needs, and made the whole process smooth and straightforward. They consistently met technical requirements and timelines, which gave us a lot of confidence in their ability to deliver.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SoftShark could have done differently?

Overall, SoftShark did an excellent job, but one area for improvement could be enhancing their process by providing more detailed documentation during the project to ensure easier handoff and long-term maintenance. SoftShark could also benefit from being more proactive in suggesting potential improvements or optimizations beyond the initial scope.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of 10Web

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

10web is an AI-powered website building platform

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftShark to accomplish?

• outsource Programatic SEO project

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftShark?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select SoftShark over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from SoftShark were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We outsourced a project to improve our SEO. This project involves collecting data from the WordPress.org repository and its plugin authors' website. Then, an AI system uses this data to create a detailed and user-friendly plugin store. The goal is to improve our SEO strategy by making a large database of plugins that are well-organized and easy to find on search engines. This will help attract more visitors and provide valuable resources for our users.
Plugin store URL: https://10web.io/best-wordpress-plugins/

• The team showed great skill in scraping data and integrating it with our AI system to create an excellent plugin store.
• They paid close attention to detail, met all deadlines, and used innovative methods.
• This has greatly helped the success of our project. The result is a strong and well-optimized plugin store that is already bringing in more visitors and increasing user engagement. We highly recommend their services for any technical SEO and AI-driven projects

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Increased Organic Traffic
• Higher Search Engine Rankings
• Improved User Engagement

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The project management was good. They delivered all items on time and kept us updated throughout the process. Whenever we had questions or needed changes, they responded quickly and professionally. Their team was very organized and made sure everything went smoothly. We are very happy with their work and highly recommend their services.

What was your primary form of communication with SoftShark?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What I found most impressive about this company was their flexibility and willingness to help solve difficult issues. They adapted to our needs and changes easily. Their problem-solving skills and dedication to delivering high-quality work made a big positive impact on our project.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SoftShark could have done differently?

no

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of an it services company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Marketplace application

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftShark to accomplish?

• Review and oversee development of mobile app by existing team
• Development of web application
• Rewrite existing backend into serverless architecture

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftShark?

Referral

Why did you select SoftShark over others?

• High ratings
• Other

How many teammates from SoftShark were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Softshark was engaged to oversee and review the work of the existing team that developed our mobile application and make any necessary suggestions. They were also engaged to develop our web application and eventually to rewrite the backend of our application that was developed by the previous team

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Mobile application and web application successfully deployed 
• Backend of application was rewritten into serverless architecture

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They are unlike any team I have worked with from a project management point of view. The attention to detail has been phenomenal with a project management tool (Jira) used to track every task. 

Communication was amazing and they would respond well outside of normal working hours which was very impressive and showed their true dedication to their clients. They responded to all needs with a "can do" attitude and always wanted to find ways to satisfy our needs and also made suggestions on how we could further improve the platform

What was your primary form of communication with SoftShark?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The communication, project management, positive attitude in the face of any blockers, and above all the technical capability. The constant communication from the CEO has also been brilliant, always double checking that we are satisfied with the service provided by his team, which we always are!

Are there any areas for improvement or something SoftShark could have done differently?

Nothing to note here - the experience has been amazing, and we will continue to work with them long into the future

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a manager for Prelaunch.com

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Prelaunch.com is a product validation platform designed to validate real market interest and purchase intent before spending a dime on product development and marketing!

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftShark to accomplish?

• Create a web application UI
• Organize data collection from open sources
• Implement ChatGPT
• Provide reports

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftShark?

• Online Search
• Other

Why did you select SoftShark over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from SoftShark were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

To deliver the project SoftShark used aws infrastructure, cognito, lambda functions, step functions and dynamo db, along with Chat GPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4. 

The project was consisting of the following deliverables: 

• User login
• Main page & Search
• Add new scraping
• Info page
• display scraped data
• Move Infrastructure
• Integration with chat GPT
• Display reports.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Since the first call, SoftShark proved its professionalism and deep expertise in web application development, AWS infrastructure, and Chat GPT. The work was divided into 3 milestones. To monitor the progress we've agreed on periodic calls where SoftShark was presenting the results followed by a Q&A session.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The project management was smooth and steady, the project was delivered on time and even a few more features were implemented and developed. Our needs and requests were met completely, and SoftShark was asking questions that eventually helped us get answers that brought even better results and avoided extra steps. With this project, we got more than we initially planned.

What was your primary form of communication with SoftShark?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Deep understanding and expertise of the technologies SoftShark uses, collaboration mindset that was demonstrated and helped us achieve our goals on time, and even more, desire to help our team and improve the product.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SoftShark could have done differently?

We were thrilled with the process and experience we had with SoftShark, including the product quality, and handover.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of a consulting and software company. We're mostly in the customer experience contact center software space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SoftShark?

We were building a cloud contact center CCaaS product for a large organization. We needed to do it quickly, so we had to augment our development team with engineers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially had a discovery phase and did some proof of concept (POC) building inside of AWS, specifically on Amazon Connect and things like Lambda and S3 buckets combined. SoftShark has helped us secure that environment and scale it to the point where we were taking Super Bowl Sundays.

We’ve provided the requirements; we have a designer who works in Figma, but most of the requirements have been documented in partnership with SoftShark. Since we support one of the largest pizza franchises in the US, we do about 800 calls a second, probably for 4–5 hours on Super Bowl Sunday. They’ve taken the solution all the way from a POC to a full-scale production environment that handles massive volumes. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve used between 5–10 people over a year and a half. Our main contact points are Karlen (Managing Partner) and a project manager.

How did you come to work with SoftShark?

They were a referral. One of our advisors knew Karlen from another project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $200,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started around July 2021, and we're still engaged with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

SoftShark has to pass our quality check and our clients’ quality checks, but we seldom have to redo work. We’ve never had something that has missed the mark. In 4–5 months, we went from a POC to one of the largest contact centers we’ve seen; there are weeks when we have around 40 million calls.

How did SoftShark perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re always on time, and we’ve never gone over budget. The team is good about setting expectations upfront about what’s not possible. They have good estimations, so they don’t over-promise or under-deliver.

SoftShark uses Jira for project management. Communication is typically via Slack, Jira, Zoom, and Confluence.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They deliver on what they say and are always willing to adjust the hours and rates so we can meet our clients’ demands.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They lack diverse skill sets, such as AI expertise. They should expand their breadth of services, but that’ll come with time.

Any advice for potential customers?

Be open and transparent with them; you'll have a good experience.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at a financial services company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our company provides information about alternative investments.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SoftShark to accomplish?

• Build a custom data-driven web app.

SOLUTION

How did you find SoftShark?

• Referral

Why did you select SoftShark over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from SoftShark were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The scope was a custom, data-driven web app to support our website.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• We launched our app on-time and to spec.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Very responsive and friendly.

What was your primary form of communication with SoftShark?

• Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I was impressed by their great communication and project management.

Are there any areas for improvement or something SoftShark could have done differently?

No