Samsung Customer Care and Mobile Experience Divisions Host National Skills and Repair Competitions

This past month, Samsung Electronics America’s Mobile Experience and Customer Care divisions hosted National Skills and Repair Competitions to acknowledge top service technicians for their excellence and improve the repair experience for Samsung customers.

“It is always amazing to witness the collaboration and development among contestants at this year’s Skills competitions,” said Mark Williams, Vice President of Customer Care at Samsung Electronics America. “These programs exemplify Samsung’s investment in the future of customer care and show appreciation for our hard-working technicians. I look forward to seeing how the competitions continue to evolve and foster an exciting learning environment for participants.”

On October 21, 2022, 15 technicians came together at Samsung’s Legacy Central Office in Plano, TX for the second annual Mobile Experience (MX) Repair Competition. Participants took part in a variety of activities and challenges, including phone disassembly, reassembly, Printed Board Assembly (PBA) replacement and a quality inspection. Each event was designed to measure the repair technicians on failure identification, speed and creativity.

The winners of this year’s MX competition were Joelle Martin De Guzman (1^st place), Joshua Piazza (2^nd place), Andrew Korman (3^rd place), Daniel Clifford (4^th place) and Nicholas Alexander (5^th place).

Joelle Martin De Guzman, 1^st place in the U.S. Mobile Repair, discussed the impact of this program on his professional development and some of his key takeaways, “The competition was a fun way to meet other technicians and learn from different service centers. This experience was amazing, and I’m looking forward to hopefully learning more advanced skills and new techniques to better improve our processes by participating in future competitions. My team and I are still coming for the top positions and hope to get in on this again next year!”

Rohan Brown used his trouble shooting skills to compete against fellow technicians.

James Knox battled the clock to complete repairs.

The following week, on October 28, 2022, Samsung’s Customer Care division hosted its fourth annual National Skills Competition at its Samsung Technical Training Center (SSTC) in Little Ferry, NJ. For this year’s competition, 22 technicians came together from across the country to compete against one another to claim the honor of being named Samsung’s “Top Tech.”

At this year’s Skills competition, contestants used their troubleshooting skills to diagnose the most difficult symptoms, all while battling the clock to complete the repairs. They also received advanced-level technical training straight from the product engineers and participated in a leadership roundtable discussion. The discussion provided critical insight into the direction of Samsung Care and how to share their new skills with their fellow technicians. Participants also provided valuable feedback to help improve training courses and field service processes.

Karie Baker, 4^th place winner in the Home Appliance category, shared her experience as the first female service technician to be part of this competition, “I wanted to show other women that regardless of what others may tell them, they can achieve anything as long as they work hard and give it a shot.”

As one of the 10.8%¹ of female service technicians in the U.S., she explained a larger meaning behind this accomplishment, “I never thought that I would reach the level it took to compete with the nation’s top technicians, let alone after only 1.5 years with the company. The competition gave me a chance to not only gain experience, but also motivate other female technicians to try and compete, while changing the stigma in this field.”

Hector Castillo, Service Quick, showed off his skills with his third place victory in the TV category.

This year’s winners in the Home Appliance category included Jong Suh Son with Metro Tech (1^st place), Austin Loncke with Nebraska Home Appliance (2^nd place) and Christopher Steele with Appliance Repair Center of Maine (3^rd place). The TV awards were earned by Jay Baek with Service Quick (1^st place), Serhiy Schevchenko with HSN (2^nd place) and Hector Castillo with Service Quick (3^rd place).

The competitions reinforce Samsung’s ongoing commitment to provide quality customer service, and follows the company’s recent #1 ratings for “Overall Product Quality and Service” for TVs and Home Appliances in the 2022 American Customer Satisfaction Index Survey. The company was also recognized by Newsweek and listed on “Newsweek’s America’s Best Customer Service 2023” list in the Online Home Goods Consumer Electronics category and its Customer Experience Team was awarded “Best Customer Experience Team” at the 2022 North American Customer Centricity Awards by ARCET Global.

With this year’s Skills competition coming to a close, Samsung looks forward to continuing to invest in technical training as part of the company’s commitment to providing the best service experience for customers. Congratulations to all of this year’s winners and participants!

To learn more about Samsung’s commitment to customer service, visit Samsung.com.

Click here for more on Samsung’s repair services.

¹ Source: Zippia