Inside Daktronics Services: A Conversation with Thair Kayed

Matt Anderson on 10/8/2025

We’re kicking off a new mini-series focused on our Services team and the people behind the work that keeps our customers running long after installation. For the first episode, we sat down with Thair Kayed, Regional Services Manager based in our Dubai office, who has been with Daktronics for more than 13 years. He shared how his team supports customers across a massive region, spanning the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa, India and Pakistan, and what it takes to deliver consistent service around the world.

Thair’s background is in complex engineering, and before joining Daktronics, he worked in construction management. That experience gave him a unique perspective when he started as a site project engineer back in 2012. “At that time, we were a smaller office with only two engineers,” he said. “I was almost always on the road, working in different countries and cultures. I loved it, I enjoyed it. It taught me a lot and sharpened my technical, customer-facing and project management skills.”

Over time, Thair’s role evolved into managing a full team of engineers, installers and technicians out of Dubai. His day-to-day now includes everything from scheduling resources and reviewing service cases to supporting new installations, coordinating with offices across the globe and, perhaps most importantly, developing his team. “Watching them grow in their careers, that’s what I find most rewarding,” he said.

One thing that stood out in our conversation was how much communication plays a role in their success. Thair’s team collectively speaks five languages, which allows them to work seamlessly with customers and contractors across the region. “When technicians talk to each other, speaking the same language makes troubleshooting so much clearer,” he said. “It’s the same with customers. It builds trust.”

Trust and consistency are two themes that kept coming up. In a region where turnover is common, Thair says many of his customers have worked with the same Daktronics people for more than a decade. “Our customers know that if they call us today or even five years from now, they’ll reach the same people,” he said. “That builds confidence. Our warranties actually mean something and that’s a real differentiator in our market.”

He shared a great example from a customer in Georgia who told him, “We buy from Daktronics again because we know after five years, you’ll still be here and your warranty will still mean something.” That kind of long-term relationship is what Thair and his team strive for.

When it comes to customer success, Thair takes pride in offering what he calls a “white glove” service experience. “Uptime has to be near perfect,” he explained. His team even provides tailored service models, including having on-call technicians with 15-minute response times and one-hour resolutions for critical sites operating nearly 24/7. “We design solutions that fit each customer’s needs so they can stay successful.”

He also shared an example from the Zayed Sports City Stadium in Abu Dhabi. It’s one of Daktronics’ oldest installations in the region, first completed in 2006. That display has been running for nearly two decades with minimal updates until a recent full replacement. “The same team that installed the system in 2006 is still supporting it today,” Thair said. “That consistency is a success story for both the customer and for Daktronics.”

As we wrapped up the conversation, Thair offered advice for anyone considering a display project: “Don’t look for a vendor. Look for a specialist partner who will stick with you and pick up the calls years down the road. We’re not just dropping off a display and moving on. We plan for the whole product life cycle and beyond.”

That mindset of focusing on long-term success and service excellence is exactly what we’ll be highlighting throughout this series. Thair and his team embody what it means to support customers for life, wherever they are in the world.