Wednesday W.L.May Profile: Leslie Linton

    

This is the part of the blog where we share a little about ourselves. Today we would like to introduce you to one of the people that help provide you with our famously fast and accurate customer service.

Name? 
Leslie Linton

Job Title? 
Major Account Manager

Where did you grow up? 
Brookings, Oregon

How long have you been with W.L. May? 
17 years

What did you do prior to joining W.L. May? 
Appliance Repairman for 21 years

What do you enjoy doing when you're not at work? 
Hunting, Fishing, Riding my Harley

To what do you credit your success? 
Paying attention to what our customers want.

What do you like about working at W.L. May? 
Talking with a wide range of our customers.

Can you share one piece of advice for others in our industry? 
Listen to what your customers want.


For more from education and entertainment from W.L. May Company click...HERE

Kelly's Korner - Appliance Parts Buying 101

Hey, All,

In this day and age of instant gratification, we here at W L May do like to provide information to you as fast as humanly possible.  But we are only human and we will need some information from you to get you your parts:

1)  Brand (Whirlpool, Amana, GE, Sears, etc.)
     This helps us to be in the correct program to enter the model number
2)  Model number (we need the complete model number - sometimes part of the model number may be off to the side of the central number)
     Manufacturer's will make design changes within a model and will differentiate which part goes to which by the "engineering" number (LSR5233EQ0 may have some different parts than the LSR5233EQ2)
3)  Serial number or Manufacturer's numbers (this may be referred to as a "P" number as it will start with that letter.
     Same description as model number - changes made within the model may be reflected by the serial number.
4)  Description of part needed.
     We've heard it all!  You don't need to know the "official" name of the part.  An accurate description of what the part does will help us narrow it down.  We more than likely will ask you a few more questions just so we get you the correct part needed.

The staff at W L May is here to help you with your appliance parts needs - just give us a call or stop on in!

Have a great week!

Monday Motivation

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.” – Gary Player 

Happy Fathers Day!

Throwback Thursday: News Recap June 12, 2014

If you have been reading the W.L. May Blog but haven't checked us out on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you may not be getting the whole story. We use all of those social media outlets to share news stories that relate to our industry as well as appliance tips we have found from other sources. Here is a recap of some of the top stories we have seen lately. A lot has been happening so without further ado:

We start with some consumer friendly articles we feel would be great for sharing:

• The CEO of Levi's recommended  you should not wash your jeans, but freeze them. LINK
• Yahoo!Shine shared 5 big mistakes people make with their washer...and how to do it right. LINK
• Total Protect said that when it comes to the dishwasher, you may be doing it wrong. LINK
• Good Housekeeping tested laundry detergent. Here are some of their findings. LINK
• YahooShine! offered us some tips to get the most out of our dishwashers. LINK
• Daily Saving had quite a list of items you can wash in a dishwasher. LINK
• A Year Of Productivity offered some suggestions to multi task your way through loading the dishwasher. LINK

Next, we look at a service company we work with and how they have been in the news recently:

• Coles Appliance opened a new storefront in Longview, WA. LINK

We found several articles that might be of interest to those of you who love all thing appliances:

• There was a scary sort-of appliance news story from Nottinham, England. LINK

Sometimes, the links we post are related to technology, business or happenings on the internet:

• Science Recorder told us about a new nanomotor-the smallest motor yet. LINK
• A motel owner in Lincoln City, Oregon sued for defamation from an anonymous poster on TripAdvisor. This could have an impact on any company that is featured on review sites. LINK
• Ever wonder what kind of testing was behing the Good Housekeeping seal? This article explained. LINK
• Nine MSN reminded us that even if you are friends with the German Chancellor, it pays to know your appliances. LINK

We close with a story that is just for fun:

• This article describes a cause of dishwasher failure I had never considered. LINK

For more from education and entertainment from W.L. May Company click...HERE

Customer Service in Appliance Repair Can Get Tricky

When you are an appliance service technician, the job can be very rewarding. Like the times that you help that sweet older lady that reminds you of Mom. Then there are the times when your assistance helps a young family avoid purchasing a replacement appliance that wasn't in the budget. Most of you also enjoy demonstrating your expertise by offering advice to those who are trying to perform their own repairs-even if that is not making your company money. When you are doing appliance repairs you are in the position to be a hero, and that always feels pretty good.

Sometimes Breaking The News Can Be Tricky... (Flickr/CC)

Like any job, however, there are times that are less fun. Like when a customer pressures the technician for a lower price by saying something to the effect of :"I can get a new machine for a few hundred bucks". When this happens it may help to remind the customer of the features involved in that $200 machine compared to the features they may have on their $1500 dollar appliance. Will this explanation always help? Probably not, but sometimes it will. Simply put, for a customer to make an informed decision about a repair job it is important that they are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges when considering whether the cost of a repair would be worthwhile.

If you are billing for your services by the hour, do you find customers will try to rush out to get a job done before they get billed for another hour? Or you may find customers who are upset to pay for the time if you get done too soon? A lot of service companies have addressed this potentially awkward situation by instituting flat rate pricing. If a customer knows it will cost x number of dollars to do a given repair, they will be less likely to be unhappy that your work was faster or slower than they expected. You can work out your own pricing list or you can use a tool such as the Appliance Blue Book, either way removing the surprises can help remove some of the frustrations.

Speaking of expectations, how many of you have arrived at a call only to find an unplugged appliance? If that happens you are in an almost no win situation. If you simply plug the appliance back in, the customer likely won't feel that you should receive payment. Meanwhile you know that between your time and vehicle expenses, not charging means lost money. A lot of companies try to address this by asking the customer if they have checked the power source. Of course, most customers would not want to admit overlooking that step so they will just say that they made sure that the machine was plugged in. Many customers consider the question to be an insult to their intelligence, so many service companies don't even ask the question-even though it is an important thing to check when troubleshooting. Recently, I heard an idea of how to approach that question with some tact. Instead of asking the customer if they have verified that their machine was plugged in, this company suggests that they have found many customers were plugging in their appliance "upside down". They then suggest the customer turn the plug over to see if the problem would solve itself. Naturally any REAL problem would still be occurring. However, sometimes the unplugged appliances then get plugged in and the problem "solves itself" giving the customer the opportunity to cancel the service call and avoid embarrassment.

As you all know, there are a lot of different ways of achieving total customer satisfaction. At W.L. May we want to give a hand in however you are working to attain that goal. Let us know how we can help.

For more from education and entertainment from W.L. May Company click...HERE

Kelly's Korner - Freezers

Hey, All,

Nearly had an emergency this weekend:  I came home Friday night and went out to my chest freezer (which sits outside my kitchen door on a covered porch) and one of my dear darling children had left the lid up!  No telling how long it had been open but the meat that was on the top was nearly thawed out.


Creative Commons license on image.

Panic!  I had just gone grocery shopping and the freezer was filled to the top.  And I didn't have room in my fridge freezer for everything.  What to do, what to do?

First of all, calm the heck down!  Nothing was ruined yet, so I shut the lid.  There was enough ice buildup inside (yeah, it needs a defrosting and cleaning) to keep things cool enough for awhile.  Enough time to see if it was going to refreeze.  I could barely hear something running but wasn't sure if the compressor and freezing system was actually working.  I think the lid had been up since the evening before.  And, since it was late Friday evening, there wasn't much I could do until Saturday - clean out inside freezer and call everyone I know to see if they had room in theirs and call my favorite techs for advice.  ARGH!!!!!

I checked it before I went to bed a few hours later - not much changed.  Things were cooler but I couldn't be sure if it was just from the coldness already in there or if it was actually working.  I woke up a couple of times during the night but couldn't get myself out of bed to go check on it - bad news will wait, right?

So when I got up Saturday the first thing I did was go check - YAHOO!!!!  Everything was frozen solid!  Happy dance, happy dance!  Someone up there loves me!  But, there are some things I do need to do and you might need to do on your deep freeze, too:

1.  Get the baby defrosted and cleaned out (should have done that before I went shopping lol!)
2.  Clean out underneath, around and inside the compressor area - please unplug before you do this and use caution so you don't disconnect or break any wires or connections.
3.  Check out the door seal (yes, mine needs replacing!)

With summer coming and harvest and hunting seasons not far off, now would be the most excellent time for you to get this done or to call a repairperson if it needs some TLC you can't handle.  And if you need to replace that door seal (or any other parts) grab your model number and give W L May a call.

Have a great week!