The role of public relations is crucial to building and maintaining a good reputation for a company, yet there’s often confusion surrounding what exactly it does.

A good public relations campaign will have a clear objective. In theory this could simply be to raise awareness of a product, service or brand, but ideally it will be more specific.

In my 30 years as an adult in the workforce, I’ve been on both sides – 15 years as a journalist and print, and the last 15 or so in public relations.

Public Relations and Responding to Customer Complaints. Todd Defren of the PR firm Shift Communications says, "I've been floored by the amount of "Customer Service" our team now handles.