When you hear the words business and trust, one of the first organizations that may come to mind is the Better Business Bureau.
And for good reason.
The Better Business Bureau has spent generations helping consumers make more informed decisions about the businesses they choose to work with. BBB Business Profiles can include ratings, customer reviews, complaint history, accreditation status and other information designed to give consumers a clearer picture of a business.
WhirLocal approaches trust from a very different direction.
We aren't trying to replace the Better Business Bureau or recreate what it does.
Instead, we're focused on something that has always played an important role in local business:
Relationships.
The Realtor who knows a great contractor.
The contractor who trusts a local electrician.
The business owner who recommends their accountant.
The neighbor who has a favorite coffee shop, dentist, hair stylist, pet groomer, restaurant and plumber.
Those relationships already exist.
WhirLocal was built to make them visible.
What does the Better Business Bureau do?
The Better Business Bureau provides consumers with information to help them evaluate businesses.
One of its best-known features is the BBB rating, which ranges from A+ to F. According to BBB, its rating represents its opinion of how a business is likely to interact with its customers.
The rating considers factors such as complaint history, time in business, transparent business practices, licensing and advertising issues. Customer reviews are available on BBB Business Profiles, but they are not included in the calculation of the BBB letter grade.
BBB also offers voluntary accreditation. Accredited businesses must meet and continue to follow BBB's standards around areas such as honest advertising, transparency, honoring promises, responsiveness, privacy and integrity. Accreditation requires a fee, but accreditation and BBB ratings are separate. A business can have an A+ rating without being BBB Accredited.
BBB also provides a formal complaint process. When a qualifying complaint is filed, BBB forwards it to the business and works as an intermediary toward resolution.
That's an important role in the marketplace.
But it isn't what WhirLocal was built to do.
WhirLocal starts with a different question
BBB helps consumers answer questions like:
Does this business have a strong marketplace track record?
How has it responded to customer complaints?
Does it meet BBB's standards for accreditation?
WhirLocal asks something different:
Who actually trusts this business?
And just as importantly:
Who does this business trust?
That's the idea behind the WhirLocal Trust Network™.
Instead of assigning businesses a letter grade, we're helping make the relationships surrounding a business visible.
Who We Trust
Every local business has other businesses and professionals they rely on.
A Realtor may have a trusted mortgage lender, home inspector, contractor, insurance agent, title company, landscaper and house cleaner.
A contractor may know an electrician, plumber, painter, roofer, Realtor and local supplier they confidently recommend.
A restaurant owner might recommend a local coffee shop, bakery, florist, photographer, nonprofit or neighboring retailer.
These recommendations happen every day.
Usually, though, they're shared one conversation at a time.
WhirLocal gives businesses a place to publicly show Who We Trust.
It turns the question, "Do you know somebody who...?" into a resource businesses can share with their customers and community.
Who Trusts Us
There's another side to the relationship.
Businesses can also show Who Trusts Us.
This can include other local businesses, professionals, organizations and neighbors who have chosen to publicly trust them on WhirLocal.
That creates a very different kind of trust signal.
Instead of only seeing reviews or a rating, someone can begin to see the relationships surrounding a business.
A homeowner might discover that a contractor is trusted by Realtors, property managers, other tradespeople and people in the community.
That's not a grade.
It's a network.
Neighbors can build their own lists, too
WhirLocal isn't only for businesses.
Neighbors can create their own Trust Lists of the places they personally recommend.
Their favorite restaurant.
Their dentist.
Their mechanic.
Their Realtor.
Their hair stylist.
Their pet groomer.
Their plumber.
Their favorite local shop.
Instead of depending entirely on a list created by someone else, neighbors can build and share their own.
Not someone else's list. Your list.™
And because these lists can include many different kinds of local businesses and organizations, they begin to resemble something people have always had offline: their personal list of people and places I know and trust.
WhirLocal simply helps bring that list online.
Ratings and relationships tell us different things
This may be the biggest distinction between BBB and WhirLocal.
BBB ratings are based on defined factors in a business's BBB file. BBB says its rating system considers complaint history, type of business, time in business, transparency, commitments to BBB, licensing and advertising issues.
WhirLocal doesn't attempt to produce an equivalent score.
We don't give a business an A+, B or C.
Instead, we're trying to help answer a very human question:
Who would you recommend?
That's how a huge amount of local business has always happened.
You ask someone you trust.
They recommend someone they trust.
And trust moves through the community.
Making word-of-mouth visible
Imagine you're looking for a roofer.
You might check the company's BBB profile.
You might read Google reviews.
You might look at its website.
You might ask a friend.
All of those things can help.
But imagine also being able to see that several local Realtors trust the roofer. A property manager trusts them. A local insurance professional trusts them. Other contractors trust them. And dozens of neighbors have added the company to their personal Trust Lists.
Now you're seeing something that historically has been difficult to see online:
The relationships behind the business.
That's what we mean when we talk about digitizing word-of-mouth.
Public. Shareable. Portable.
There's another important part of WhirLocal's philosophy.
We don't believe a business's trust should be trapped inside a platform.
WhirLocal Trust Networks™ and Neighbor Trust Lists are designed to be public and easy to share.
Businesses can share their WhirLocal Trust Network™ through a direct link or QR code.
They can also place a WhirLocal Trust Card™ on their own website showing how many places and neighbors trust them.
Businesses on our Trust Accelerator plan can go even further and display their WhirLocal Trust Network™ directly on their own website.
That means someone doesn't necessarily have to know what WhirLocal is or visit WhirLocal first.
The trust network can come to them.
We believe that's important.
Trust should belong to the people and businesses who earned it.
What about reviews?
Both BBB and WhirLocal can include customer feedback, but again, the approaches are different.
BBB publishes customer reviews on business profiles and takes steps to confirm that a marketplace interaction occurred. Those reviews are separate from BBB's letter-grade calculation.
WhirLocal also helps businesses collect customer feedback and reviews.
But reviews are only one part of what we're building.
A five-star review can tell you:
"I had a great experience with this business."
A trust relationship can tell you:
"This is a business I'm willing to publicly recommend."
Both are useful.
They simply communicate different things.
BBB Accreditation and a WhirLocal Trust Network™ can work together
This isn't an either/or decision.
A local business could absolutely be BBB Accredited and build a strong presence on WhirLocal.
In fact, the two can complement each other.
BBB Accreditation can demonstrate that a business has committed to BBB's standards around trust, honesty, transparency, responsiveness and integrity.
A WhirLocal Trust Network™ can demonstrate something else:
The relationships that business has built within its community.
One communicates standards and accountability.
The other makes relationships and recommendations visible.
Both can contribute to the bigger picture a customer sees when deciding whom to trust.
Two approaches built around the same important idea
We have a lot of respect for what the Better Business Bureau has built.
BBB has established a recognizable system for helping consumers evaluate businesses and for encouraging businesses to operate with integrity.
WhirLocal isn't trying to become another BBB.
We're building something different.
BBB helps businesses demonstrate that they meet established standards of trust.
WhirLocal helps communities make the relationships behind trust visible.
One focuses heavily on standards, accountability and marketplace confidence.
The other focuses on relationships, recommendations and local word-of-mouth.
At WhirLocal, we believe there's room for both.
Because at the end of the day, we're starting from something the Better Business Bureau clearly believes too:
Trust matters.
And the more we can do to make trust visible, meaningful and useful, the stronger our local communities can become.
About this comparison
This article is intended to help readers understand the differences between WhirLocal and other platforms. Information about third-party products and features is based on publicly available information at the time of publication and may change. All trademarks and brand names belong to their respective owners. WhirLocal is not affiliated with or endorsed by the companies mentioned unless otherwise stated.