REVIEWS COMPARISON TABLE
Diamond Certified Resource (DCR)
Most Review Sites
Real Customers
To start each rating, DCR uses a company’s actual customer list. The DCR only performs its surveys by telephone, which allows it to verify that each customer has actually purchased from the company being rated.
Fake Reviews / Multiple Identities
Anyone can post an anonymous review, whether they were a customer or not. Roughly 30% of posted reviews are fake. Anyone can game the system by creating multiple identities and posting fake reviews to bolster bad companies, or sabotage good ones.
Random Sample / All Customers
DCR receives all customer names and phone numbers or a large, random sample of customers (400) from each rated company. Company owners can’t cherry-pick because of such a large base. Thus, dissatisfied and satisfied customers are surveyed in true proportion to their occurrence.
Cherry-Picking
Review sites encourage companies to ask people to write reviews. Many times, owners and employees solicit their families, friends and best customers to post 5-star reviews. This cherry-picking produces misleading and biased results.
Statistically Reliable / Rigorous
DCR research is statistically reliable because a large, random sample of customers is pulled from each company’s customer base. Customers are “interrupted” by phone interviews at home, so there’s not a self-selection bias. Ongoing research, complaint and credentials ratings ensure Diamond Certified companies continue to perform well.
Inaccurate Star Scores
Each company’s “star score” (calculated by averaging scored reviews) isn’t an accurate score for customer satisfaction because review posters aren’t derived from a random sample that represents all customers served. Instead, customers and non- customers are solicited to write reviews.
Performance Guarantee
The Diamond Certified Performance Guarantee provides mediation and a money-back guarantee (up to $1,000) if a customer has a problem with a Diamond Certified company.
No Guarantees
Most sites don’t offer a performance guarantee.