One of the great services BBB provides both consumers and businesses is free dispute resolution.

What makes it great? Well, a complaint is often the result of a misunderstanding, one that oftentimes becomes emotionally charged. We see this as an opportunity fora business to turn a dissatisfied customer into a lifelong customer, and BBB can help.

But never before have we dealt with the volume of complaints that came through our office last year – almost 10,000 filed complaints from consumers against businesses in B.C.! 

We have four Dispute Resolution Counselors trying to service these complaints to the best of their abilities. This is extremely hard when each of our counselors is sitting with a caseload of 400 to 500 open complaints at any given time throughout the year.

So you can imagine our goal for this year: to decrease the amount of filed complaints to our BBB.

How do we do that? We educate, educate, educate consumers to choose the right business the first time – choose a BBB Accredited Business. We teach businesses to rise above the mediocrity in our marketplace – provide excellent customer satisfaction. 

The lessons we try to impart: Business owners and managers need to hire people who genuinely like people and are genuinely liked by people. And consumers need to choose a business not for their prices alone, but because they like the people and are treated with respect.

These are the steps we can all take to build a trustworthy marketplace.