BBB Research:

Business owners often want to see what types of issues are mentioned in customer reviews for their industries.  At BBB, we have thousands of narratives from the many customer reviews we receive each day.  We took a sample and manually read ten thousand BBB customer reviews. We also reviewed various research tools designed to measure service quality, such as ServQual.

We ultimately developed a set of 5 standard, fundamental categories and an accompanying set of computer algorithms to analyze them in customer reviews and complaints. This set of 5 captures over 90% of details of BBB customer reviews and allows us to identify patterns and make insights about industries and companies.

Using algorithms for our 5 categories, we have already gained some interesting leads that turned out to be valid.  For example:

• The industry of anesthesiologists appears to have more billing issues than the rest of the health care professions.  We did some additional research and found that various consumer and government agencies have had anesthesiologists' billing on their radar for some time, and that legislation is being considered in many areas.  We were tipped off to this issue entirely from results of the algorithm.
• We also identified some of the top roofing companies in North America.  The results of 207,000 data points could be a way to measure excellence in the roofing industry, aside from traditional approaches like calling for nominations from the public.
• We found many insights for small businesses, such as the value of interpersonal relations in pet services and beauty services. We found the value of time management and communication in appliance repair.  We found how happy customers aren't too concerned with affordability for good pest control companies.  

Let's take a quick look at these 5 dimensions:

The first and probably most obvious dimension we settled on was money management.  This dimension involves how a company handles pricing and price structures, billing, and ultimately value for the amount paid.  When customers are happy, it usually means a fair price.  When customers are unhappy, it usually means they were caught by surprise somehow: a billing error, a hidden fee, an unexpected auto-renewal, or an inferior value perceived for the amount paid.

The second dimension is time management.  In customer experiences, this mostly involves 1) speed, and 2) punctuality.  Customers tend to like businesses that start on-time and work quickly.  The old adage “time is money” applies here because slow or late services have real costs to consumers.  If a consumer orders a product that was intended to be a Christmas gift and it arrives in March, it’s probably too late.  If a consumer has to wait an extra day for a refrigerator technician to arrive, food may spoil.  If a consumer has to wait an extra day for an AC technician, it may mean the cost of another night in a hotel.

The third dimension is communication, which also contains responsiveness and expertise.  When customers are happy, this usually means the company is reachable and provides accurate, helpful information.  When customers are unhappy, it usually means the company wasn’t reachable or didn’t provide accurate information.  There’s an old adage that says “knowledge is power.” When communication breaks down, it can cause stress and mistakes that have real costs.  And when communication flows well (for example, when a custom receives helpful hints from a technician on how to maintain their AC unit), this can translate to real savings.

The  fourth dimension is emotion, which includes terms like emotional intelligence, soft skills or people skills.  Many customers choose companies and/or remain loyal to companies simply based on personal relationships.  There’s an old adage in business: “they don’t care what you know until they know you care”.  When there is a feeling of respect and caring for the customer, it has a very real effect in reducing stress and building trust.  And when customers are unhappy, it often means this bond was broken by things like rudeness, rage, or harassment.

And the fifth dimension is work performance quality.  In the case of services, this is usually called performance, and in the case of products, it’s usually called quality.  This is also probably an obvious dimension.  When a customer orders a dress, they will probably be unhappy if it falls apart into threads after a single wearing.  When a customer pays for her lawn mowed, she’ll probably be unhappy if there are tall patches and short patches and rough edges.  It's understood that consumers will generally pay more for better quality, so perceptions of quality translate to real value.

What about Ethics?

Ethical values affect all 5 dimensions.  As we see in the diagram above, ethics are at the center, influencing everything else.  A company can be unethical in such examples as: 1) a hidden fee (money management dimension), 2) a rage-filled tirade of insults (interpersonal relations), 3) an unfinished job (work performance), 4) a service delivered woefully late (time management), or 5) unreturned phone calls (communication).  The definition of ethics means actions or decisions that affect other people’s well-being, positively or negatively.  

Final Notes

Sometimes these five dimensions can coincide, overlap and/or feed one another.  For example, if a company refuses to return four phone calls in two months, that could register on both the poor time management and poor communication dimensions.  Or for example, if a company charges twice as much as quoted for a job that was only half-finished, that could register on both the poor money management and and poor performance dimensions.

But each of the 5 dimensions is very separate/distinct from one another.  Money is not emotion.  Time is not money.  And so on.  We actually checked this using statistical analysis, making sure that the 5 dimensions had very low or nonexistent statistical correlations among them.

We manually validated the five dimensions and found that over 90% of issues in complaints/reviews were successfully identified as belonging to these five areas.

Not everything is covered in this model, of course.  If a customer likes that a company is ecologically-friendly or "green," for example, that doesn’t currently fit into any of the 5 dimensions.  (We tested a sixth dimension involving social impact/purpose, and we are saving that as a possibility for the future.)

Download the infographic below.