First Kyocera EMEA Service Trophy

12 June 2008

Kyocera Mita named the winners of its innovative EMEA Service Trophy competition. The Service Trophy aims to identify and reward the individual service technicians across Europe with product knowledge and trouble-shooting skills that are second to none. Want the best customer service? Reward the best service technicians! Over six months, 642 service technicians from several countries competed through a three-stage contest, with the winners beating rivals in tests of knowledge and of practical problem solving exercises, including a final that pitted their skills against carefully hidden and little-known bugs.

Kyocera Mita is already well-known for its innovation in creating durable and environmentally friendly products, in particular the cartridge free ECOSYS printer and MFP range. With the EMEA Service Trophy Kyocera Mita aims to gain recognition as an industry leader in service. While the competition is a fun way to stoke up healthy competition - is also integral to the company’s mission to be “The Excellent Service Company”, which it will achieve by maintaining and rewarding a culture of excellence among the teams who offer front-line support to customers. As part of its commitment to service, Kyocera Mita maintains an exceptionally large service network: In the 14 European countries with Kyocera offices there are currently over 6,000 service technicians from Kyocera’s channel partners, who have qualified as authorised Kyocera service providers. The Service Trophy helps Kyocera to maintain a close relationship with its channel and encourage and reward continuous improvement of skills.

from left: Koji Seki (Chairman of Board, Kyocera Mita), Douglas Sneddon from Altodigital/UK, Ronny Nestler from Datec GmbH/Germany, Fabrice Curtz from Luc Mattar PgmbH/Belgium, Martin Tierney (Service Manager, Kyocera Mita UK, Katsumi Komaguchi (President, Kyocera Mita Corporation) and Norbert Wolter (Senior General Manager Service EMEA, Kyocera Mita)
The winners of the top three places received an all-expenses paid one week trip to Japan, which included sight-seeing tours of Osaka and Kyoto, and VIP visits to Kyocera Mita’s Japanese HQ and factories. The winners were named as:

1st place winner - Ronny Nestler from Datec GmbH, Germany
2nd place winner - Fabrice Curtz from Luc Mattar PgmbH, Belgium
3rd place winner - Douglas Sneddon from Altodigital, UK
“It’s great to award the winners of EMEA Service Trophy 2008, and in particular to recognize the skill and dedication of our partners,” said Norbert Wolter, Senior General Manager KYOCERA MITA European Service Center. “Kyocera Mita sees service excellence as a continuous work in progress to ensure that we can exceed customer expectations in the present and anticipate future needs. To do this close collaboration between Kyocera and its partners is vital so we can offer a unified service strategy, and apply the same organizational structure and service processes across EMEA.”

While the first national service trophies were awarded in 2003, this year is the first in which Kyocera Mita has taken the competition to a pan-EMEA level, with winners of national competitions coming together to compete for the EMEA title. Next year the competition goes global: Kyocera Mita will find the world's best Kyocera service technician by including the US, Australia, South America and Asia into the competition.

For registration to Service Award 2008 please click here.