What Does the BBB Do?

Your Better Business Bureau helps the people you care about most – your employees, customers, friends, and loved ones – with business and charity reliability information, complaints, and dispute resolution services as many as one million times a year. About four out of five consumers (79%) say they would be likely to contact the Better Business Bureau for information about a company’s reliability.

In addition to supplying pre-purchase information about business and charity reliability, the Better Business Bureau helps you in these important ways:

•   Resolves customer problems without litigation
•   Informs businesses about customer service problems
•   Provides educational reports about a wide array of topics, ranging from smart travel tips, renting or buying a car,

    wise shopping strategies, and home improvement, to senior issues
•   Alerts individuals and companies to scams that affect them
•   Educates businesses and consumers about responsible advertising and       e- commerce practices
•   Promotes business self-regulation

 

The BBB offers several ways to resolve marketplace disputes using dispute resolution, the common sense alternative to an expensive, protracted legal pursuit. Dispute resolution processes, which include conciliation, mediation and arbitration, are all user-friendly, inexpensive and help to speedily resolve hundreds of thousands of complaints each year. By working with both parties to a transaction – the business as well as its customer - the BBB achieves
Two goals: restoring consumers' trust in the marketplace and promoting more effective business practices. The CBBB coordinates with local BBB’s to develop dispute resolution programs tailored to meet the specific marketplace needs of various businesses or industries. Business leaders know that drawing on the BBB system's dispute resolution experience and expertise will help them to effectively address customer satisfaction issues.

This is an exciting time for the BBB system as we build upon our unique mission of promoting trust in the marketplace. Trust is a greater need than ever, as evidenced by the 90 million requests for service recorded by the BBB system in 2005. I fully expect this figure to continue increasing as our organization creates new ways to serve its constituencies. The reliability, dependability and impartiality of the BBB and the data it collects and distributes is more relevant than ever before.

A number of tests are underway to help the BBB to be even more responsive to consumers' quests for helpful information. Bureaus are testing ratings systems to evaluate businesses, looking at how customer compliments might add value to BBB reports, and examining other opportunities to expand BBB services. Many of these innovations emanate from the grass-roots level, where BBB’s seize upon opportunities to better serve their marketplaces.

Top 10 requested reports for 2005 in the US industry

Our Vision:
An ethical marketplace where buyers and sellers can trust each other.

Our Mission:

BBB’s mission is to be the leader in advancing marketplace trust. BBB accomplishes this mission by:
      • Creating a community of trustworthy businesses 
      • Setting standards for marketplace trust
      • Encouraging and supporting best practices
      • Celebrating marketplace role models, and;
      • Denouncing substandard marketplace behavior

BBB sees trust as a function of two primary factors – integrity and performance. Integrity includes respect, ethics and intent. Performance speaks to a business’s track record of delivering results in accordance with BBB standards and/or addressing customer concerns in a timely, satisfactory manner.

BBB ensures that high standards for trust are set and maintained. We exist so consumers and businesses alike have an unbiased source to guide them on matters of trust. We provide educational information and expert advice that is free of charge and easily accessible.

BBB Accreditation is an honor – and not every company is eligible. Businesses that meet our high standards are invited to join BBB. Businesses meeting BBB standards are presented to local Boards of Directors (or designees) for review and acceptance as a BBB Accredited Business. To read more about our Accreditation Standards.

All BBB accredited businesses have agreed to live up to our Principles for Trust. Our Principles for Trust are a comprehensive set of policies, procedures and best practices focused on how businesses should treat the public – fairly and honestly in all circumstances. To review our Principles for Trust.

BBB does not compare businesses against each other, but rather evaluates businesses against our standards – and our standards clearly speak to the character and competence of an organization.

BBB is your key advisor, most reliable evaluator and most objective expert on the topic of trust in the marketplace.
Our Values To accomplish our mission, we commit to the following values to guide all of our decisions and behavior, with each other and with all those we serve:

Excellence:
Strive to do our very best. Be accountable to the general public, our members, and to each other for everything we do. Commit to providing the highest quality service with excellence and consistency everywhere we operate.

Integrity:
Be honest and ethical in all of our business activities. Treat everyone with integrity, keeping our promises and learning from our mistakes. Have the courage to hold fast to our professional convictions.

Teamwork:
Communicate, cooperate and collaborate freely across organizational and territorial boundaries, and work as one team to fulfill our mission.

Trust:
Trust in our colleagues throughout the BBB system and in ourselves. Say what we mean and mean what we say. Communicate with honesty and candor.

Respect:
Treat everyone with respect and dignity, valuing individual and cultural differences. People are our fundamental asset. We will empower them to develop and use their talents and capabilities to the fullest.

For more information click here (link to BBB)