For VISTA 2015-2016, organisers in Peru made a concerted effort to increase registrations and managed to record its highest participation rate ever. When the Latin American semi-finals begin in Curitiba on April 5, it will include five Peruvian teams.
In total, 410 participants forming 111 teams took part in VISTA, accounted for around 15 per cent of all participants in Latin America.
“We believe that VISTA provides important training for all our dealerships, and contributes to customer satisfaction, uptime and ultimately, profitability,” says Cristian Meza, Head of Competence Development, Volvo Perú S.A. “We therefore created a plan to encourage all employees to participate.”
A key feature of this plan was an intense communications campaign, which saw each of the managing directors of Volvo Peru’s dealerships present video messages to employees encouraging them to register. Workshops were also supplied with promotional material including banners, stickers and posters.
Once the competition begun, teams were supported by technical instructors who were able to help participants understand each question and could provide the right tools to find the information they needed. As an added incentive, in order to keep participation high, prizes were awarded to the top three teams in each round, including tablet computers, remote controlled Volvo truck models and other Volvo merchandise. Special VISTA souvenir hats and shirts were also given to teams who completed all three rounds.
“In this competition we had more than 400 employees in each of the three rounds – a new participation record for Peru,” adds Meza. “This was achieved thanks to the commitment of the leadership in each workshop. We consider ourselves one of Volvo’s main markets in Latin America, and we want to show our experience in this competition, which is why we’re so happy to have five teams in the semi-final. We even hope to get a coveted ticket to the world final in Sweden and maybe even win it.”
