Inavero Blog

Better Business Bureau – Should they be trusted with satisfaction?

The new system employs an “A-F” educational grading system as opposed to the binary “Satisfactory”, “Unsatisfactory” ratings of the past.   This is certainly an improvement over the past system. +1 point for the BBB.

The system relies on “a variety of factors when rating businesses, including consumer complaint volume, nature of complaints, and company responsiveness to customer concerns.” Any customer satisfaction rating system that is to be trusted requires transparency and knowing how many responses (n) were utilized to produce the rating. In this case we know neither. -2 points for the BBB.

You’re only as credible as your reputation allows you. I will readily admit my perceptions here are tainted by the numerous phone calls I got when I first started Inavero from someone at the BBB trying to convince me that if I didn’t invest in accreditation, I was going to lose out on a big contract. The salesperson badgered me repeatedly, telling me they had received requests from a large company for information on us and that they were showing negative information until I paid for their accreditation. I had been in business for 6 months, started in an extended hallway in my house – it is safe to assume that if there was a large company considering doing business with us – I would have known. It turns out I’m not the only one with that complaint. One story is written here. And another here. A simple Google search and you’ll come up with dozens more. My point is this – if you don’t trust the source – how can you trust the outcome. -1 point for the BBB.

Quick math should net you a score (in my opinion) of -2. Said another way, I am certainly not a promoter. As of today, our business isn’t ranked on their site (but many of yours are – check it out). That’s a relief. We garnered an NPS of over 70% and an average score of 9.2 out of 10 from our clients. You wouldn’t think I’d be worried. Yet, lack of trust + lack of transparency = uneasiness in my book.