Improving Online Reputation Of Technology Companies: GoodFirms Webinar
GoodFirms recently hosted this successful webinar with an objective to help technology companies understand the impact of strong online reputation.
In Today’s time when it’s difficult for a service seeker to find a reliable technology partner, it is essential for the companies to show their talent and expertise by providing quality services to their clients.
Client reviews, market penetration, company reviews, industry experience, folio and ability parameters play a major role in strengthening company’s online reputation.
Most of the companies are still unaware of this and are lacking behind in taking the benefits of the competitive business world. Therefore, GoodFirms stepped forward and hosted this webinar.
Quick Highlights
-The significance of online reputation
-GoodFirms and how it can help you
-Research Process
-Review process
-Creation of tenacious profile on GoodFirms
-Benefits of getting featured on GoodFirms
The significance of online reputation
Online reputation is a strategy to monitor, identify and influence your digital presence and credibility.
Why it matters?
Having a good reputation in the technology world a) drives traffic, b) help you in showcasing your talent and expertise to the new clients.
How a company can earn it?
With good client reviews. Yes, client reviews is a major factor that helps in decision making. If the clients give useful and good reviews about your company, the probability of getting more projects increases. Plus, it helps in developing a good rapport with your client for long term.
What is GoodFirms and how it can help you
GoodFirms is a B2B research firm that magnifies company’s credibility and visibility gauging a dozen of parameters including industry experience, client reviews, focus area, market penetration, and ability parameters.
GoodFirms costlessly helps you with;
Reputation Management with focused client reviews: Client reviews are the powerful autonomous content that speaks for your technical skills and ability.
GoodFirms provides you the free platform where you can list the reviews of your key clients helping others to know their experiences working with you.
Focused clients that highlights your quality and competency are also the elements of social evidences. We share such reviews across our social media platform helping you strengthening your online visibility.
Furthermore, we also take reviews on your behalf so you don’t have to ask for and follow up for public reviews.
The positive reviews and social evidences positions you as the market leader and increases the trust amongst the service seekers.
Well! You can even add these reviews and ratings on your website by using GoodFirms’ Badges and Goodboxes.
Research Process
GoodFirms thoroughly analyse each company on the basis of above stated parameters including the information the company provide to us. This helps in determining company’s overall deliverability and focus.
Each of the six parameter has a score of 10. Therefore, the overall score is calculated out of 60 score points.
A quick look at the mechanism of each of the six parameters:
-Client Review counts on client satisfaction rate which depends on the project timeline, working experience, problem solving ability, quality solution and budget offered by the company.
-Portfolio counts on the types of projects a company has done so far - their ability to face challenges and solve complex issues, tools and technologies used, languages and platforms used, etc. Basically, it reflects the services you offer.
-Market Penetration counts on the industrial sectors and different categories a company has provided its services to. It also considers client penetration. Meaning; which part of the country your clients are from.
-Industry Experience counts on the years a company has served its clients with qualitative and problem solving solutions. It also considers your media presence, awards and accolades, and publications like eBooks, case studies, white papers and more…
-Ability Parameters are category specific. For instance; a mobile app development company will have App Design and App Development as two ability parameters. It solely depends on the quality, deliverability and focus related to the project in the review.
All these parameters matters while we perform evaluation task of each company listed at GoodFirms. We start our evaluation process after the company submit us the client review as it weighs high in our methodology.
Review Process
Companies find the review process complex. They think the more they submit the review the higher they get ranked. It’s true indeed. But truly speaking, client reviews is a real deal. Submitting just one useful review also helps you in gaining good score and chances of your company ranking at the top increases.
We have a defined review process which square ones with the successful submission. Once the client submits his review, we carry out a verification process to screen for the genuineness. And, only after that a client is contacted for a short feedback either via phone call, email or link to the written review option. Though we consider other social evidences when the client is contacted via phone call or skype yet, we prefer client’s Linkedin account for the verification process.
These efforts are put in order to make sure that the review has come from a genuine person and is not from a deceiver who is directly or indirectly connected with that company.
Creation of a Tenacious Profile
Today, when the competition is becoming tough day by day, it has become a requisite for you to show your company’s talent, expertise, folio, reliability score to the service seekers.
For that, you need to add,
-Company Description that outlines what service you provide, the sectors you serve, the value it holds, company process etc.
-Tagline that defines your company’s vision and mission. It has noticed many times that companies submit “Top App Development Company in New York” sort of a tagline. Would like to inform you that such taglines won’t add value to the quality services you provide to your clients. Taglines should be short, crisp and catchy that holds seekers to your website.
-Email id acts as a backup in case you lose access or sending request for project proposals.
-Phone Number in case we need to get to you.
-Key Clients and recent projects add value to your company’s reputation. Further, submitting these will glance seekers the brands you have work with that ultimately helps you in scoring a good trust score.
-Focus Area sheds the light on the technology platform you have focus. For instance; a company having 100% focus in mobile app development will have an advantage over other companies having focuses divided in mobile, web, software and other categories. But 100% focus in mobile app development will also limit this company to get ranked only in the Mobile App Development listings.
-Certifications help you in creating a good impression on service seekers that you follow a standard approach to align processes and work.
-Category specific reviews help you in making your ranking better. So try focusing on a single category.
-Portfolio & Videos is another way to help you in strengthening your profile. Therefore, it required for you to keep adding your recent work often in order to drive traffic and increasing your online visibility.
-Widgets boost the visibility. It helps you improve trust among your audience and garner strong online reputation. These widgets let you showcase real time reviews therefore you can embed these using the code snippet and links.
Benefits of getting featured on GoodFirms
There are two types of listing; 1) Directory listing 2) Research listing. Research is wholly based on your research and review score which remains unaffected until you submit your recent projects and reviews.
A company with one strong and useful review can also make space in the first page of the research list. And, it may happen that even after submitting 10 client references your company does not appear in the list. Thus, this criteria is directly linked with the qualitative reviews and not the numbers.
Directory list is controllable to some extent. You can position your company in the directory list using either of the two approaches; a) submitting more category focused reviews b) becoming a paid sponsor of a particular category.
We ensure the companies that are listed at the top get more organic visits and strong visibility.
This is it! To dive deep on how GoodFirms can help you improve your company’s online reputation, walk through the ppt and video. Click here to take a look at the ppt.
ChatBots: The Era of Virtual Assistants Born To Assist Humans
Chatbots are any computer program specially designed to connect with humans either via voice or text methods and stimulate their behaviour as a communication partner.
ChatBot is the buzzword nowadays because of the technology used in its implementation- Artificial Intelligence. These virtual assistants act as a helping hand to humans to complete their daily activities. For instance, shop online, weather forecast, book a cab, product information, etc… Tasks like these are easily managed by the chatbots. You just need to type down your query and wait for the chatbot to do it for you on your behalf.
For instance; Poncho- The Fb cat that provides weather information. While researching on chatbots I thought to experiment with Poncho. What I noticed is, Poncho consists of predefined responses. It picks the keywords like location, and person name and respond based on that.
Here is a quick look;
Poncho: Get Started
Oh, hey, Rachael ! I’m Poncho and I’m here to talk about weather.
I can send you daily weather forecasts! Where do you live? Tell me the name of your city, neighborhood, or postal code.
Rachael: Hey Poncho
Poncho: Hrm, that’s too big of a place to forecast. Can you be a little more specific?
It displays an erroneous message as it did not get the keyword it asked for. Instead it got a different response which was not programmed in the library.
Chatbots like Poncho are implemented using retrieval based model. It is easy to understand and work on. This model is the best for an amateur who wants to learn bot implementation. The responses are picked from predefined classes and resources and no new text is generated. It uses machine translation to understand the context of the user.
Chatbots like Mitsuku are implemented using generic based model. It is hard to understand and work on. This model requires an expert who has knowledge about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing , Natural Language Understanding. The virtual assistants developed using this model are smart and intelligent to understand the context the user types or speaks. Their responses are solely based on what they hear and understand.
To experiment chatbots implemented using generic based model, I started communicating with Millie. Millie is a female chatbot which is under Turing test.
Here’s a quick look at the conversation;
<Rachael> Hi Millie :)
<Millie> :-) Hi there Rachael.
<Rachael> How are you doing today? ;)
<Millie> Ah. i'm doing great, how about you? :-).
<Rachael> I am also doing great :)
<Millie> :-) Glad to hear it. What's new?
<Rachael> I am doing research work on chatbots, could you please help me?
<Millie> Your polite style is very nice. Will you include me in your research?
<Rachael> Thanks Millie. Yes, I would like to include you in my research.
<Millie> That's ok. Gosh! Why would you want to do it? Why do you want to do it so much?
<Rachael> I want to write a blog that's why.
<Millie> Ah I understand now. You should write then. It might be made into a film one day.
<Rachael> Thanks Millie :)
<Millie> :-) Don't mention it.
The above conversation looks more like two individuals are talking to each other and that’s the USP of an intelligent chatbot. She understands the different types of symbolic and textual languages and respond within seconds. Chatbots like these are helpful to solve instant queries and reduce the workload.
Infographic - Difference Between Retrieval Based Model Vs Generic Based Model
The Popular Chat Bots.
There are a number of chatbots for different industries assisting professionals with their daily tasks.
Mr. Chatbot: This ChatBot helps users with online shopping. This virtual assistant ask you to connect your store with Facebook Messenger and cater the best shopping experience to your consumer. Mr.Chatbot is the popular eCommerce chatbot that understand natural language and the user context. Users find it easy to communicate and browse what’s trending on your store.
Your.MD: This is a popular chatbot that takes control of your health. You can integrate with Messenger, Telegram or Kik and begin your conversation with a virtual doctor. It asks to check your symptoms or let him know your problem. On the basis of your reply, he guides you further.
Florence Chat: She is a virtual nurse that helps you in keeping track of your health, notifies timely for the medicines,checks symptoms and guides you with health information. You can integrate it on messenger and let her instruct you with the time and medicines to take.
Niki.ai: The female virtual assistant that helps you with food ordering, cab booking, hotel booking, utility bills, mobile and DTH recharge. It provides you with different options that resonates your pain of tapping into an application for recharge. For instance, if you want Niki to recharge your mobile. She will assist you with different options and ask you to select with confirmation option. Your mobile instantly gets recharged by typing yes.
How You Can Build A Smart & Intelligent ChatBot For Your Business
Chatbots are designed and implemented for a specific purpose. The information that is fed in the bot helps users to overcome the issues they find to be complex. The chat bots that are designed for any survey or small tasks will simply ask a set of questions providing a touch and swipe style response using buttons or carousel. But when the complexity of solving an issue increases, the need for a chatbot to be intelligent increases as this can help the bot to solve complex problems effortlessly.
Here are the three concepts you need to consider before developing an intelligent chatbot:
→ Perception:
Perception plays a vital role in developing a perfect chatbot incorporating the competency factors required for problem solving. A simple chatbot that you find in platforms like Facebook Messenger represents users with a set of predefined questions along with an option of click or swipe to understand the user input. This method is easy which requires less time in knowing the user behaviour and context. However, this approach lacks the fluency of human communication. Consumer experience also counts. How you want your assistant to be matters. For instance, you want to go for a movie and you ask the chatbot to pick any time in weekend. Now it’s the intelligence of the bot that will make it assess and understand user behaviour and provide you what you asked for.
Picking the example of online shopping. Yes, chatbots have made it easier for users to shop online and pick the best that suits. Assuming you want to buy formal pants for an important meeting. You asked the bot to pick the pants according to your personality. The bot presented a few trendy pants in black, blue and grey colour. Pastel colour pants were not in the list which you needed. The bot made it clear by not displaying the pastel colours in the option. Still you asked for the option seeking for a favourable response (pastel colour pants are not available in the stock. It will be in stock in near future).
Responses like these should be fed in the chatbot so that users don’t find it ignorant. However, you can reduce such complexities following a couple of steps. 1.) Keeping the response limited to question and answer. Let the chatbot fetch the context of the user and respond as per the understanding.
2.) Once the chatbot is capable enough to grasp the user context using NLP/NLU, experiment with it making the chatbot understands the user behaviour with respect to the input. There are a number of tools available which you can use to add NL abilities in your chatbot such as API.ai, IBM Watson, Wit.ai, etc.
→ Learning:
Learning improves skills and ability to understand things better. This is another dimension that helps in increasing chatbot intelligence. Does your chatbot learn? Does he wants to increase its potential to understand user behaviour and inputs? If yes, your chatbot can be a perfect epitome of AI, Deep Learning, NLU/NLP. Each module of the chatbot such as NL understanding and user behaviour can learn to improve the abilities using machine learning teaming up with expert humans. There are a number of Machine learning techniques available: supervised, unsupervised and reinforcements. Each of these techniques can be put into action using different set of algorithms. For instance, understanding user context from the inputs, supervised algorithm is used. To analyse user based on their communication tone, unsupervised algorithm is used. Lastly, in order to learn the instant responses with respect to get going with the conversation (What to say now?), reinforcement algorithm is used. There are different interpretations what we think and speak. Therefore, in the beginning, chatbot will not pick the actual context of the user. Thus, it may fail to understand the context even though it’s capable enough to respond with relevant answer based on the user’s input and context. Such examples are stored in ML module so that each iteration that is either misinterpreted can be resolved to understand the user better the next time.
→ Planning:
Planning helps you to streamline your task and complete it without hassle. The same applies with chatbot. Planning is an internal functionality that is a deciding factor for a chatbot to carry out the task a user has requested for. It’s easy for a chatbot to conduct a survey, book a cab, order food as a developer has already instructed the bot which database to look into, what query to hit and fetch the relevant data. This would save the designer and developers efforts to map each iteration taking place between a user and chatbot.
Complexity increases when a chatbot using its own intelligence fetches the information from the relevant database, hit the relevant query and respond to user. Once the chatbot figures out which database to look into, which query to pass and what will be the resulting outcome then it is capable enough to smoothen the development process. Thereafter, developers can easily work on what and how a chatbot is required to perform. This has been the focus from a long time that drives the AI research called AI planning. AI planning is a tough task to work on and therefore, there aren’t any easy to use toolkits available that help you with AI planning. However, a few algorithms are available across the web (e.g. STRIPS, GraphPlan). The term AI planning is not much heard or used. But yes, it brings a promise to uplift the future of chatbots.
Final Thoughts
Chatbots that are implemented now are developed for miniature tasks as mentioned above. But with the in-depth learning, and research on AI, machine learning, natural language processing, natural language understanding, we can come across the chatbots that are more intelligent than the humans in near future.
Why GoodFirms Added “Write a Review” Feature In Its Pocket
This blog is in the continuation with the recently published one that details about - How GoodFirms is beneficial for Service Seekers & Service Providers.
The buzzword ‘Grow Organic’ has brought revolutionary changes in the way business are now being carried out. Thus, GoodFirms extends help to capitalise the most out of the radically changing scenario. Client reviews & related content is a major portion contributing to this and emphasising on a company’s performance with respect to client’s requirements.
A client review helps a partner company to boost its online reputation and also the service seekers in evaluating their capabilities. Thereby assisting them in making the right decision and picking the appropriate partner that best fits their needs.
The Need For "Write A Review" Feature
GoodFirms has a very extensive research process that deeply scrutinizes every company based on their services and product quality, industry outreach – sectors and categories served, types of projects delivered – complexity and challenge level, seriousness to commitments – on timelines and price points, media presence, awards and recognitions, publications – case studies, whitepapers and other resources, overall industry experience and client satisfaction rate. Client Reviews play a very significant part in GoodFirms evaluation and carries a heavy weightage.
Being the most important parameter of the research, the review submission, verification and evaluation is time-consuming. Traditionally, companies were required to fill up the client reference form available through their profiles and submit all the details of the clients and the projects. Once a client reference is added, GoodFirms carries out a verification process to screen for the genuineness of the reference added. After this process only the client is contacted for a short review for their respective partner company.
But the roadblock here was - the companies added client references without the consent of clients and thus when GoodFirms reach out to them, it appeared a little difficult to establish a connect. This task is a little time consuming for the companies since they had to gather all client details and then seek prior permission from their clients to share a review about their recent performance.
The traditional client references still exist but in order to streamline and shorten the client review process GoodFirms introduced “Write a Review” feature.
With this the clients can directly pen down their honest experience, whether it is good or bad or ugly, about their partner company with an option of anonymity.
While reviewing the clients we found that 3 out of 10 clients did not want to disclose their names. Thus, GoodFirms now has an option of posting reviews anonymously which means when a review makes it to the board, it won’t reveal your identity to anyone. The clients can themselves let us know if they want to opt for anonymity or else we make sure to take an anonymity confirmation at the end of each review call.
This also removes the roadblock we mentioned above to some extent as the client reviews (or the guest reviews as we name them) come directly from the clients and thus we know that we already have the consent of the clients and this eases to establish a connection during the review call.
It also cuts down the verification step since the client only gets to submit a review using his/her LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google signups. Thus, we already know if the review that has made to our inbox has come from a genuine reviewer or not.
How “Write a Review” works?
This is the most asked question by the partner companies as well as their clients. A client review is a serious business for us and it is way more than - “They were awesome” kinda reviews. There are tons of reviewing companies that publish hundreds of one liner reviews that leave the service seekers puzzled.
Here is what goes into GoodFirms’ Extensive Client Reviews:
Step 1: Adding A Review
Can Never Be Easier Than This!
Step 2: Reviewer Verification
You Are Not A Robot, Right!
Once a review is submitted, GoodFirms does a reviewer screening to make sure that the review comes from a genuine person which is the client of the company for which the review has been added. We get the reviewer details from their signup profile (LinkedIn, Facebook, Google) which reduces the time involved and fastens the process. If there’s still anything required, we prefer gathering them during the next step, which is Review Call.
Step 3: We Will Need Your 5 Minutes Over the Phone
A Quick Feedback!
Client reviews are the best testaments to scan the capabilities of the company, thus once the review is with us, our team calls the client to learn about his experience working with the partner company. The client/reviewer needs to rate the partner company on several parameters and share company’s strengths & improvements.
At the end of the call, we take clients’ confirmation on anonymity and shall the client choose to keep the review confidential, we do not post their identity with the review.
Step 4: Publishing Client’s Feedback
Off To The Board!
Once our team is done with the interview, we transcribe it and publish the entire feedback in the review section. This helps other service seekers to make a right decision while choosing a partner company for their dream project, and it helps companies to improve their online reputation plus client experience.
Ending Note:
Today, various companies need a strong online presence to grow and scale their business. In such situation, providing quality and requisite services is the primary concern of the provider. The more quality services they provide, the more traffic they drive to their website. No matter how the website looks what matters is the reliability, trust and quality a seeker looks for in the company. And, that’s where GoodFirms swirls its magic wand.
Want to review a company? Visit our website and follow the simple steps.

















