UAE customer satisfaction on rise

Abu Dhabi / WAM

Service Hero, the region’s only consumer powered customer satisfaction index “CSI”, announced a two-point growth in UAE customer satisfaction during first half of 2017. These results were made public as the as the company released its six months “Customer Satisfaction Index” for the UAE, which scored a total of 77.7 satisfaction rate.
Most of the 14 sectors covered by the CSI have witnessed a steady growth. The H1 index collected 3806 authenticated consumer voices in the UAE. The data shows a strong improvement in various sectors, Home Furniture for example topped the list with an 83.7 satisfaction score out of 100 maximum points, while Mobile Operators stayed at the bottom with a poor 64.6 satisfaction score, followed by retails banks with 71.2 scoring out of 100 points. Other industries that performed well were Electronics, Supermarkets and Casual dining.
“Service Hero is designed to provide affordable tools to observe, document and measure satisfying internal and external customer needs so that companies can identify priorities, set standards and execute plans for sustainable performance improvement.” Says Faten Abu-Ghazaleh, President and Founder of Service Hero.
“The UAE market offers each consumer an array of choices, and as customers express their demands and needs this will ultimately help build longstanding relationships of value that transcend people’s lives to a better place.” Continues Abu-Ghazaleh.
The H1 report also reveals that sectors like Islamic Banking, Home Furniture and Supermarkets witnessed a notable increase in customer satisfaction, with 5.5 points, 4.5 points, and 3.8 points respectively, whereas Mobile Operators saw decreased by 0.9 points.

DIMENSIONS
While customer satisfaction has increased in general, both Value for Money and Call Center are still at the bottom of the 8 dimensions of the service index. On the other hand, Physical Location (attractiveness, convenience, parking access and timings), Reliability and Staff were rated the highest.
When comparing the H1 results with the 2016 index results, it is clear that all service attributes witnessed an improvement. With the Call Center has topping the list with 2.6 points, and Website only improving by one point.

DEMOGRAPHICS
In line with last year’s results, the index shows that customer expectations and satisfactions towards the services they receive is dependent to how sophisticated they are. In other words, the report finds that the higher the education is, the harder it is to please customers. Something which also affects their brand loyalty. It has also been noted that customers holding a Masters or PhD degree have dropped 4% in NPS scores since last year.
Abu-Ghazaleh explains: “Customers vary in both their expectations and satisfaction of the service they receive. The more exposed and sophisticated a customer is, the more likely they will be intolerant of poor service, and the harder it is to please them. Companies need to understand the expectations and satisfaction levels of all their customer segments in order to better satisfy them.”
In terms of demographics, Arab expats continue to be the least satisfied while Emiratis are most satisfied, noting that satisfaction has mostly increased with those aged above 50.
In order to encourage and acknowledge repeat and valuable customers’ feedback, Service Hero introduced “customer badges” which allow dedicated customers to become Service Experts, Ambassadors, and finally Influencers. Basically, as soon as cusomters register and rate brands’ services, they receive a member badge, which enables them to earn various grades depending on their engagement, depth of opinions and comments, etc. On the other hand, responsive companies that seem to listen and respond to feedback would earn an “Engaged” badge.

THE CULTURE OF
EXCELLENCE INDEX
In addition to its national customer satisfaction index, Service Hero recently introduced the “Culture of Excellence Index”, a tool specially designed to assess a company’s focus on service.
“We believe that companies have the best intentions when it comes to delivering excellence to their customers, but in a competitive market the challenges remain in the pressures they face which makes many companies lose focus.” says Faten.
“Working on rating companies over the years we notice that while companies understand the importance of service excellence, few of them know exactly what to do to enable it internally.” She concludes.
The new index measures how organized, clear and aligned a company is in providing excellent service, and it is currently being used by leading retail clients in Kuwait and the UAE. The Culture of Excellence Index aims to determine what are the steps needed to drive a culture of excellence and align everything around excellence. Following that, companies can also opt in to a brief engagement with Service Hero on turning the culture around.