Is your company active on Angie’s List? How many reviews have your customers written about you? Have you ever checked? You might be surprised.

Bernie Pesut, who works on national accounts for Angie’s List, says Angie’s List is growing fast because it’s word-of-mouth marketing for companies at the local level, and it’s free.

“We are the nation’s premier provider of trusted reviews,” Pesut says. “The word ‘trust’ is intentional as it’s what separates us from other reviews on the Internet. The ratings are created by people in your area who have ranked your service.”

Businesses are given ranks of A through F.

Pesut says all pest management companies are a great fit for Angie’s List. In 2013, more than 250,000 Angie’s List members will search for pest control, he says, and that is a 64 percent increase over 2012. In fact, Angie’s List sees a historical member growth of 70 percent each year, which supports their projected growth for 2014.

“When you have that much demand for your service, and customers want to find a local, highly rated service company, if you’re the highly rated company, you’re going to put your company in a better position to get business from Angie’s List members,” he says.

If you haven’t checked out your business on Angie’s List, here’s what Pesut suggests:

First, search for your business here to see if a customer has written a review about your company. If so, go ahead and register, for free. Once you register, whenever someone writes a review of your company, you’ll get an email notifying you, and you have the opportunity to respond. There are paid components of Angie’s List, where you can guarantee your company a higher spot when someone searches for a service you offer.

Rick Steinau, owner of Ace Exterminating in Cincinnati, has been on Angie’s List for 13 years and has won 11 Super Service Awards. Ace currently has an A rating and has hundreds of customer reviews. Steinau says Angie’s List not only lets you take advantage of good customer reviews but also it helps you learn about and resolve less-than-ideal customer situations.

“If you get a negative comment, don’t ignore it. Respond,” Steinau says. “In general, our negative comments revolve around a miscommunication or misunderstanding. We’re going to respond. We’re going to give a refund or something to make it right. We don’t want that negative review to sit there unanswered. First, we contact the customer, discuss it and then get the customer’s agreement on how we’ll fix it. Then we ask the customer if we can go in and respond to the complaint online to close the loop.”

Ace Exterminating gives customers Angie’s List forms, asking them to write a review, once or twice per year.

“We promote Angie’s List with our customers,” he says. “We want to know if we’re doing OK. And generally, being positive like that, we get positive comments.”