I have just published my first of a number of articles (I am at 4 and counting) dealing with the question of customer complaints:  5 Good Things About Customer Complaints. These articles will cover ideas, processes and research to help you understand the whys and wherefores of complaints and how their successful resolution can really benefit a business.

Thank you for your help and guidance.

Before I started working in Local SEO and Local Marketing,  I grew up in and ultimately helped run a local family business. My father never made it to one of my Little League Games. As a single parent that was working 60 hours a week that is not a big surprise.

When I ran the company I still spent 55 hours a week engaged in the business although I did manage to make it to my children’s sporting events but only by the grace of having my face glued to my cell phone email.

I came away from that experience with a deep and abiding respect for the people that create and run their own local business that is often built on blood, sweat and more than a few tears. But also a realization that many basic business practices were not in place or out of reach to the typical business.

My approach to Local Search was always to put myself in the shoes of these business and try to understand what they were feeling. And that is now even more true with GetFiveStars. We have created a tool that can help every local business be better.

Since helping create GetFiveStars 3 years ago I started to shift my focus from  the initial parts of the customer journey via search to the many parts of their journey that begins with the sale.

I firmly believe that it is an area that local businesses can dramatically improve and that will show huge returns going forward. It’s an area where I can provide incredible value to businesses and actually make their very hard lives easier. This is even more true as local search results becomes less and less visible due to the many changes in search.

As the success of GetFiveStars continues I will be devoting more writing time to questions of improving a customers post sale experience and engaging them for retention and marketing.

Join me at GetFiveStars for the series.