Western Digital (WD), a leading worldwide hard disk drive manufacturer, has announced today (Monday, September 4, 2006) the opening of its new service center in Egypt to cater to WD’s customers in North Africa. The opening of the full-fledged service center was announced at a press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel in the Egyptian capital of Cairo.
The new service center comes in line with WD’s strategy of maintaining proximity to its customers by having a close physical presence, so as to quickly and efficiently address their service requirements and increase customer satisfaction. WD will receive malfunctioning or defective drives through its authorized partners, validate the warranty terms and issue the RMA (Return Merchandize Authorization) number to the distributor, who in turn will get the credit or replacement drive as per RMA policy.
“A commitment to increase customer satisfaction by making it easier for them to do business with us, has been a key factor that drove WD to set the standards for regional service. The idea behind opening this new service centre was to provide our customers in North Africa a best-in-class value proposition in terms of after-sales service. Egypt, being the economic and technology nerve centre of the region, was a natural location for the service centre,” said Hafeez Khawaja, Senior Regional Director, Middle East, Africa and South Asia, WD.
“WD has been the first to recognize the importance of the North African market and bring high quality after-sales service to the customer’s doorstep. Having a local service center where customers can return malfunctioning drives for repair or replacement will serve to enhance customer confidence in WD and eliminate the need for such products to be shipped to Europe, Far East or Dubai, resulting in cost savings and reduced turnaround time in getting replacements,” Khawaja added.
The estimated turnaround time for product replacement, upon the product being received by WD, is less than a week. WD’s Cairo service center complements the one in Jebel Ali in Dubai, and demonstrates the company’s long-term commitment to the Middle East and Africa region. The new center will particularly benefit those customers with data-sensitive applications who tend to be reluctant to ship malfunctioning drives out of the country, as WD will provide replacement within the country.
“WD is one of the largest hard disk drive suppliers in the world and covers over 90 per cent of the storage needs of the IT industry. We are today the market leader in Middle East and Africa, as revealed by the latest IDC (International Data Corporation) study, and we continue to consolidate our position through a combination of sustained investments in Research and Development and high quality service,” Khawaja said.
“WD drives are known for their high performance and reliability, and our relentless focus on providing world-class customer service further enhances WD’s reputability in the hard drive market and delivers the maximum value for the customer’s IT hardware investment,” Khawaja concluded.
WD had in recent months introduced a number of new products to the Middle East and Africa market including My Book, the newest line of its external hard drive storage, and the USB 2.0 WD Passport™ Pocket Drives, a miniature digital storage device about the size of a matchbox and capable of holding as many as five two-hour feature-length movies, 1,700 digital photos, 1,500 songs or thousands of documents. WD had also launched an upgraded version of WD Passport™ Portable USB Drives. With no need for a separate power supply, the 120 GB drive WD Passport Portable USB Drives are easy to use anywhere and are designed to serve as a digital file briefcase by enabling users to add instant extra storage.
