As a former roofing contractor, my opinion is that BBB has lost some of its relevance and usefulness, especially for the home services industry. However, we found that when homeowners are considering a particular contractor, they are more at ease to hire a company that is BBB accredited, as it signals that the company cares about its reputation.
In other words, although BBB may no longer be a critical piece in the contractor home search process, having a BBB accreditation can give homeowners a certain sense of peace of mind. Homeowners will know that the company takes their reputation seriously and should anything major go wrong, they will have a recourse.
That being said, most homeowners don’t really scout BBB.com for home service professionals. Instead, they go to sites like www.Angi.com to read other homeowners’ reviews to assess the reputation of a particular contractor, especially now that is free.
There are also new and emerging home services platforms where people go for roofing and remodeling pros. For instance, www.Roofinity.com is actively working on developing a promising new platform for assessing transparency and trustworthiness of roofing contractors, while www.BuildZoom.com is a good resource for general contractors.
There are also new homeowner education and roofing contractor search services such as www.RoofingCalc.com for roof repair and replacement services where many homeowners go before hiring a roofer.
Thus, BBB can still be viewed as a sort of a quality signal by homeowners making a contractor hiring decision, but it’s certainly not the place most homeowners visit first when they’re looking for home remodeling pros.
In summary, BBB is the place where only homeowners will look to, when assessing trustworthiness and credibility of a particular company or wanting some reassurance about a particular contractor.
Lastly, those BBB logos do look good on contractor websites, so given that BBB logo is likely to help with conversions, it may be a worthwhile investment for larger contractors.
Let me know your thoughts and feel free to contact me to get help in marketing your home services company.