We currently offer two paths to qualify as a Five Star Rated company based on your customers’ feedback. We also verify general liability coverage, workers’ compensation coverage (where required), and all state-required licenses on an annual basis.
Our Qualification Policy
Your company can qualify as a Five Star Rated company either via Google review analysis or internal surveying. If you don’t meet the criteria of one method, you must meet the criteria of the other to be considered for Five Star Rated.
Method #1: Google Review Analysis
To qualify for Five Star Rated via Google, we look at all your company’s Google reviews over the past three years.
What we look for:
- We require at least 25 reviews for the first year (and 15 upon annual renewal) for your primary service category and 10 for each secondary category.
- Your overall Google rating for the past 3 years must be at least 4.0.
If you don’t have enough Google reviews to qualify this way, we will try to qualify you via internal surveying (please see details below).
Method #2: Internal Surveying
Our internal survey process involves reaching out to your customers for their feedback on your company and the work you did for them. We do this via email.
For internal surveying, we need a list of your customer names and contact information from the past three years. If you are a current Five Star Rated customer qualifying for a new category, we need a list of all paid jobs since the last time you submitted names.
What we look for:
- We need to collect at least 25 reviews for the first year (and 15 upon annual renewal) for your primary service category and 10 for each secondary category. Of those 25 reviews (and 15 upon annual renewal) per primary category, we prefer for at least 10 of those reviews to come from jobs completed over the past 3 years.
- Your company must achieve an 80% overall satisfaction score over the past 3 years.
- Your company must advertise all categories you want to qualify for on your website.
Overall Satisfaction
If 80% of the responses to all survey questions are positive (4 or 5 stars on a scale of 1 to 5) for your company overall, your company will qualify. We call this our Overall Satisfaction score.
The scores published in our print publications and on fivestarrated.com are based on the Overall Satisfaction score. We use the following scale to determine star rating for each review:
- 5 = 90+
- 4 = 70 to 89.9
- 3 = 40 to 69.9
- 2 = 10 to 39.9
- 1 = 9.9 and below
When we refer to considering three years’ worth of data, we define a “year” as a calendar year. This means that regardless of when a survey was completed during that time period, it will count equally toward your company’s final score. We call this flat three-year scoring.
We consider ALL survey data gathered for Five Star candidates, as long as it falls within our three-year time frame. This means that all customer feedback, whether or not it was obtained as part of a qualification surveying campaign, will count toward a company’s score.
Important Notes
- Five Star Rated customers that receive 3 or more help desk complaints and/or guarantee claims in a 12-month period will go through an internal review process to determine whether you are still a good fit for Five Star Rated.
- Companies’ qualification status will be determined throughout the year. Your Account Manager will keep you updated on your company’s status.
- All companies will be eligible for continued surveying after qualification status has been determined.
- Companies will not risk becoming disqualified through any continued surveying after qualification status has been announced.
Continued Surveying
If your company qualified via Google, you will have the opportunity to continue surveying your customers. This is not required, but we highly encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to hear what your customers have to say.
This optional surveying will not impact your qualification score or the survey data that we publish alongside your profile.
Questions?
Let us know! Please reach out to your Support Representative or Account Manager with questions. We’re happy to help!