Click here for Part I, Part III & Part IV

Working towards greater standards for trust between people and businesses

Angie Barnett is the president and CEO of Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland. For over a century, BBB has provided people with reliable, unbiased information about the myriad businesses serving their local communities. The national BBB hosts reviews of millions of companies in the US, and facilitates hundreds of thousands of disputes between consumers and businesses each year. As an independent not-for-profit organization unaffiliated with any government entity, BBB seeks to improve standards of marketplace education and trust.

EDWIN WARFIELD: What are some of the things you’ve accomplished over your tenure at BBB?

ANGIE BARNETT: Thinking about the last 10 years at BBB, one of the things I do is I shake my own hand or pat myself on the back because, unlike my generation, I was a job jumper, and for somebody my age, that wasn’t very normal. I never stayed in one place longer than about five or six years, because I always had wonderful opportunities before me to go to the next level. Being here for 10 years was a hallmark for me. I was very proud that I had achieved that, and things that we’ve celebrated over the last 10 years for any business have been looking at the impact of the internet on our business—looking at the impact of your reputation being out there online for everyone to throw stones or to celebrate. That has been a tremendous gain.

How do we take a 100-year brand and make it relevant today? These 10 years have been focused on keeping our brand alive, looking at brand initiatives, promoting—for example, we are the Better Business Bureau. We call ourselves BBB because the word “bureau” implies government—we’re not a government entity, we’re actually a not-for-profit—so the word “bureau”: trying to lift that out and calling ourselves BBB.

Just examples of the team coming together, remain relevant, make our voice heard in Maryland. Maryland’s business community is a little crowded—so many trade associations—we have so many resources for the business community. Everybody’s competing for a space and jockeying for their place in the business community’s mind. So, we’ve trying to lift and elevate BBB’s reputation by going back to our mission and that is creating a marketplace of trust. Trust is probably more relevant today than it was 10 years ago, because the cost of breaking trust is very expensive, and, I mentioned, from regulations to customers abandoning a product because they no longer can trust that brand, trust that product, trust those business practices. To BBB it’s incredibly important to stay relevant, and I’d say those would be our hallmarks—how we have achieved that, and I believe we have.

Q. How is BBB’s role distinct from trade associations and chambers of commerce?

A. BBB is actually very different and unique from a trade association or a local chamber, and all of them have places—I always encourage businesses, “you clearly need to be a member of your local chamber, you need to be part of your trade association, to keep refreshed in your industry”—but Better Business Bureau in really based on a group of like-minded people in which ethics and integrity in your business practices are number one. “Accredited businesses”—they are not members of the Better Business Bureau. We took that word out of our vocabulary about 10 years ago; again, part of that relevance.

Accreditation means the same thing as for a college or a hospital, but, in the business world, it means we have a set of standards, and you must voluntarily agree to match your business to provide proofs and indications, through a vetting process, that you meet those standards. For a business who is applying for BBB accreditation, we have basic standards, and we’re going to look at how that business advertised, so we’re going to check the website and look and make sure they’re not making deceptive claims, and that the claims they say hold true in evidence. We look at the business owner: What other businesses have they owned or operated? We do use all public resources to make these decisions, and make sure they’re licensed—that’s really important in some industries; their industries may be competency license, so we want to make sure if somebody is holding themselves out to be a CPA, indeed they are licensed to do so. Tax preparers—that’s a big area in Maryland; initiatives to try to give credibility to good tax preparers by vetting out those that are not licensed to do so. That’s a competency. Those were examples where we look at the background of a business.

We also look at government action: Do they have any government action against them? That was important for financial institutions. That was important in the mortgage industry. We do track and monitor that. We look at how they treat their customers by information we have, meaning do they have a complaint? How did they handle that complaint? Did they resolve that complaint? Did they answer it in a timely fashion?

We look at all these pieces. We have standardized checklists that we go through. We have two staff whose full-time jobs are to do nothing but vet our accredited business community.

One of the things that we are very proud of is that we don’t take anybody and just everybody—we never want 100% of the market share, for example—but what we do is we deny accreditation to businesses that might apply. We deem businesses ineligible to renew, if at the time of their annual evaluation they’re no longer in compliance with our standards; or we actually may terminate or revoke a business’ accreditation. That’s a loss of revenue, that’s a loss of our roster, but our accredited businesses are only as strong as the weakest business that we accredit, so we always want to lift everybody up to these high standards—the highest standards.

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Founded in 1969, KatzAbosch is one of the largest CPA and business consulting services in the Mid-Atlantic region. Our mission is to provide the highest quality accounting, tax, financial and management consulting services to our clients. We understand the needs and challenges of our clients and we have made it our obligation to create, grow and protect asset value. The experts at KatzAbosch offer a full service solution while maintaining a tradition of ethics and incorporating the latest technology and unique business practices. Excellence in an industry often begins with how those closest to the company—its clients and employees—feel about it. For these individuals, KatzAbosch is a place where people and businesses excel and prosper. Our advisors can meet all of your service needs including; Audit & Accounting, Business Valuation & Litigation Support, Consulting, Estate Planning & Administration, Financial Institution Services, Forensic Accounting & Fraud Examinations, State and Local Tax (SALT), Taxes & Planning.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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