Safety records given top billing at GM
dubai — General Motors’ locally based auto parts warehouse in Jebel Ali holds the commendable record of operating for a decade without a single staff member needing to take a day off because of a safety incident a work.
Given the number of staff, parts and nature of the work that is no mean feat. Here we talk to GM’s Customer Care and aftersales director, Mohammed Al Fayyad, about the achievement and the car company’s overall customer relations strategy. 90,000 car parts and 125 staff are large numbers to deal with and that’s just one facility. What are the main challenges you face in your role? How have/do you overcome them? We have 90,000 different types of parts on the shelves at any one time and run three shifts almost around the clock to ensure we can send out around a million order lines of car parts across the region every year.
With people, heavy machinery and cargo constantly moving around the warehouse, the main challenge is to ensure everything is running safely and efficiently as possible. We look to the best practices we’ve seen in other GM warehouses and around the world.
Over the years, we’ve implemented a comprehensive, customized and ever growing suite of processes,
In terms of customer service, GM and our dealer partners put considerable emphasis on training to equip our representatives to provide a customer experience that’s world class Mohammed Al Fayyad, Customer Care and aftersales director, GM
policies and systems to make sure we can turn orders around rapidly and get parts to our customers as fast as possible. Customer care and after sales are traditionally two departments in many UAE companies with perhaps less than stellar reputations. What do you do to combat that? GM is a very customer centric company, where we hold true to the motto ‘we put our customers at the center of everything we do’. A few years ago, we changed this department’s name simply from ‘aftersales’ to ‘customer care and aftersales’ to reflect both internally and externally the importance and focus we put on looking after our customers. In terms of customer service, GM and our dealer partners put considerable emphasis on training to equip our representatives to provide a customer experience that’s world class. But most importantly, the way that we ensure we’re delivering the high caliber service our customers deserve is by listening to them and acting on their feedback.
Every month, we contact customers that have visited our service centers recently to collect their honest views on the service they received. The insights we gain through this ongoing exercise are incredibly valuable and we use them to make improvements throughout our dealer network. Best of all, by listening and acting on customer feedback, we’re proud to say that the customer satisfaction with our dealers region wide has never been higher. How has 2016 been so far in terms of GM Middle East’s numbers and how do you see the rest of 2016 playing out? So far, in 2016, we have seen growth in our parts sales business. This year in particular we have noticed that people seem to be more keen to hold onto their vehicles and have them maintained or repaired, rather than simply upgrading to a new vehicle. How would you rate your customers’ satisfaction and do you have a statistic for customer retention? We contact our customers every month to collect their feedback on their experience with our dealers when they’ve had their vehicle serviced or repaired. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen our customer satisfaction rating continuously improve. Customer satisfaction with GM dealers has gone up 29 per cent in the UAE over the last two years and is the highest it has ever been. You use locally made parts in UAE servicing. Do you see potential for more locally made products to be used? Our ACDelco maintenance free batteries are produced in Dammam, Saudi Arabia where we are the only local manufacturer to utilise ‘stamp grid’ technology.
This technology optimizes power output and makes a battery that is much more durable, efficient and reliable than other types of vehicle batteries. We’re also proud to say that our extensive range of ACDelco engine oils are blended here in the UAE. Having locally made products means we can turn around orders very quickly. Having a Dubai based warehouse for our range of 90,000 genuine car parts also allows us to get parts orders to customers quickly, meaning they can spend more time on the road and less time waiting for car parts. How important is it to have a Dubai base in regional terms? Would you have a similar facility elsewhere at the expense of Dubai? Dubai is the perfect hub from which to base both our regional headquarters and our giant parts distribution warehouse. Its central location enables us to stay close to our 11 Middle East markets, and its convenient access to one of the region’s key ports allows us to build a strong supply chain for the region.
— david@khaleejtimes.com