Quality Service and Quality Marketing!

50th State Fair
When I was a teenager, I used to hang out on the beach with my friends for the whole day. I met my friend Christy who lived with her Mom in California during the school year and came to visit her father on Oahu for the summer. We had the best summers together. Christy's father owned a restaurant in Waikiki called Clark's, so one summer, he decided to have a booth at the 50th State Fair. Christy and I worked in the booth and we served strawberry waffles which were perfect for summer and were delicious.  This blog has the recipe you can try. At the 50th State Fair, we had a Belgian waffle maker which made nice crisp waffles. We took a quarter section of the whole waffle and added strawberries in syrup and then covered the waffle with whipped cream. Yum! They sold like hotcakes - ha! Oh, and we had shorts on so that attracted the fellas to our booth even before the waffles did. Quality Service Lesson:  Promote your business with something delicious at community events - like State Fairs!

I am happy to get recipes from my blog readers so I can cook or bake something new. Thanks for reading! 

Great Marketing Kerry Bringhurst!
I have enjoyed and appreciated Public Radio for years. Now, I feel like I have a connection with Kerry Bringhurst, one of public radio's brightest stars.  I e-mailed Kerry to ask about getting a link for a segment that Steve Eaton did on a Monday. (You want to listen to this audio file, but you can also read along as you listen. It will make your belly shake too!) I did not know if I would get a response or not, but I really wanted that link and could not find it on the website. The same day Kerry responded saying she would get the link posted or would e-mail it to me. I was so excited to get such personal attention from Kerry. I thanked her and told her that Steve makes my belly shake, not thinking she would respond, but she did. She said "Belly shaking is the best!" Which it is, of course, but I was pleased that Kerry and I had a back and forth via e-mail. Then Kerry sent me an e-mail five days later letting me know that Steve Eaton was going to be on the air one morning helping with the membership drive and would provide some "fun early morning conversation."  It was nice to hear from Kerry again with information that interested me, and it was very smart that she did some promoting of the fund drive while she was at it. That is exactly the type of marketing that businesses are supposed to be doing, according to my Social Media class. No hard selling, just some helpful news. Good job Kerry! That's great marketing! Now whenever I hear Kerry in the morning, I feel like I have a friend on the radio. I follow her on Twitter because I like the subjects she covers and I check out UPR's Facebook page regularly. If you are unable to listen to UPR, check out their website for amazing stories and coverage. If you have not contributed to UPR yet, please do so, and be sure to catch Kerry every day on Morning Edition. You will not be disappointed!  Quality Service Lesson:  Make your customers feel special while promoting your business - then your customers will do your marketing for you.

Cleaning GE Burner Grates

Continuing with quality service and great marketing . . . in 2011, after 4 frustrating years of scrubbing my stove burner grates like the one in the photo, I finally decided to see if General Electric had an easier way to clean them.  I e-mailed GE and got this response from Tara, their Appliance Specialist:

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 2:09 PM, <answerctr@ge.com> wrote:

Dear Ms. Moxley,

Thank you for contacting us regarding your gas range. I regret to hear that you are experiencing difficulty cleaning the grates. I am sure this is very frustrating and I apologize for this unfortunate experience.

Below you will find the various cleaning methods recommended by GE for the burner grates.

Enamel on steel or cast iron grates and caps:
Grates and caps should be washed regularly in hot soapy water, rinsed in clean water and dried before placing them back on range.

You can also place the grates and caps in a sealed bag or covered container with 1/4 cup of ammonia. Allow to sit for three hours up to overnight to loosen soil. Rinse thoroughly and dry. To prevent rusting of cast iron grates apply a light coating of cooking oil to the bottom of the grate.

I certainly hope this helps.
Again, I greatly apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

If I can be of further assistance, please feel free to e-mail me again, Ms. Moxley.

Sincerely,

Tara
Appliance Specialist
Consumer e-Response Team
GE Appliances
www.geappliances.com

Check out GE Appliances on Facebook and Twitter!

Happy Camper!

Can you imagine a better response than that?  She even made a suggestion to check out GE on Facebook and Twitter. Now is that great marketing, or what? I put my grates into a Ziploc baggie over night with 1/4 cup of ammonia and the next morning, the burned on crud just rinsed away. The grates looked brand new. I was so happy! I told my mother-in-law about the new cleaning method because she was having the same problems and she was elated when she tried it. She kept mentioning how happy she was that she no longer had to scrub her burner grates.  Good job General Electric for hiring Tara and for training her to be an asset to your business!  Quality Service Lesson:  Make life easier for your consumers. Maybe even have helpful hints about your products or company on your website.

Remember - every day is Aloha Friday! Take the Aloha Spirit with you wherever you go and make it a good one!