This section of the B Impact Assessment (BIA) evaluates the way you treat your customers through your products and services, marketing, and the privacy of data and security.  The customer section also rewards companies whose products and services address social problems for or through its customers.  

Getting started with the customer section of the BIA

The most effective way to improve the Customer structure in your business is to work long term to put your customers needs first. 

Managing customer stewardship

Step one of improving your score in the customer section is managing the impact on and value created for your customers. This includes making sure you’re collecting customer feedback, ensuring the quality of your product or service, assessing the outcomes produced, committing to ethical marketing and advertising practices, and protecting client data.

Managing product impacts

In addition to the first step of assessing the outcomes produced by your product or service, you can also take it a step or two further by incorporating customer feedback and testing into product design and putting formal programs in place to continuously improve the outcomes produced for your customers.  

Examples of companies with high customer scores

Customer scores can vary by industry and whether companies produce a product or deliver a service. Some companies, particularly those in the social impact/social entrepreneurship space, have gone above and beyond in this section, making B Lab’s Best For The World list, which recognizes the top 5% of all B Corps around the world. Here are a few of our local favorites:

Chicory Wealth

Headquartered in Decatur, Georgia,  Chicory Wealth Management earned 51 points on the customers section, scoring particularly high because of their investment criteria. Chicory believes in integrating money and meaning and is also a certified Fee Only financial advisor.

Southern Bancorp

With a mission to create economic opportunity in rural and underserved communities, Southern Bancorp provides responsible and responsive financial products and services that balance profit and purpose. Arkansas’ only B Corp, they scored an incredible 53.1 points in the customer section, including 30 impact business model points. 

What will my company gain from improving our customer score?

Not only will improving your customer stewardship put you on the right track to becoming B Corp Certified, but it will also help with customer acquisition and build customer loyalty, leading to greater customer lifetime value (CLV).

Customer acquisition

Going all-in on customer stewardship includes an investment in continuously improving your products and services and the outcomes they produce for your clients. This means that you’ll consistently be delivering more value to your customers, making you a more attractive company to buy from and do business with. 

Customer loyalty and CLV

Bringing in customers is great, but we all know that it’s much more expensive to bring on a new client than to retain an existing one. Putting customers first and beginning to measure everything related to their satisfaction and the outcome of their purchase can only help keep customers happy–and coming back.