General Motors Middle East Recognizes Stellar Service at Dealers Technician Competition 2018

Alamana’s technician Sherwin Anthony Ribeiro takes home top prize for second year.

Last week, General Motors’ 40 top auto technicians from around the Middle East have been competing in Dubai to be named the best in the region.

The competition, now in its ninth year, reinforces GM’s customer centric philosophy towards a sustainable high rate of fix it right first time.

“At GM, we put the customer first. This is not just in providing the right products and choices for every need, but ensuring customer vehicles are fixed to the highest standard possible,” said John Roth, President and Managing Director of GM Africa and Middle East.
Our culture is one of passionate people that are dedicated to excellence, and this competition is one of the many ways we encourage our technicians to develop their craft in order to provide our customers with the best aftersales experience possible.”

After having gone through a qualification process over the past year, and whittled down over 1,000 competitors to the top technician, the 40 finalists met in Dubai to compete in a series of tasks to test their technical skills. They diagnosed and fixed 40 purposely booby-trapped vehicles under the watchful eye of by 20 judges from General Motors as well as third party experts from several different areas of relevant focus.

The group collectively fixed 10 issues over 10 hours during the two-day event.

Taking home the top spot for the second year was Sherwin Anthony Ribeiro, an Indian national, who is a technician for the Alamana Industries Company, GM dealer in Kuwait. He scored the most points for his accuracy and speed in diagnosing 10 difficult issues on various vehicles, be they from Cadillac, Chevrolet or GMC, and formulating the best course of action for a correct fix from the outset in the quickest time.

“The Competition is full of challenging tasks, it pushes us technicians to work harder and fix a customer’s car right form the first time,” said Sherwin enthused after John Roth handed him his winner’s trophy during a gala dinner. It is an amazing initiative by GM, because it maintains a high level of skills and I hope to make it a hat trick in 2019.”

Joining his teammate in the top three was Willbold Bensley Gomes from AlAmana in second, followed by Nikhil Satarkar from Mannai Trading in third.

“Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. Since the inception of this competition, and its supporting training programs, we’ve continued our constant commitment to provide the best in service standards. ‘Fix it right the first time’ is more than a mantra, it is our guide is how we engage with our customers, and resulted in the highest customer satisfaction levels in the region. Our dealer technicians’ skills, highlighted by this competitive tool is a major contributor to our customers’ satisfaction,” said Mohammed Al Fayyad, Director of Customer Care and Aftersales for General Motors Middle East and North Africa.

In February, more than 1500 GM dealer technicians from around the Middle East signed up for the competition. Since then, they have been through training programs and five grueling elimination rounds consisting of online and written tests. This cut the field down to 300 and down to the top 40 who flew into Dubai to compete in the finals this past week.

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