UAE population diversity brings up customer service challeges said TICSI

Speaking prior to chairing the judging panel in this year’s ‘GCC Service Olympian Awards,’ Philip Forrest, the President of The International Customer Service Institute (TICSI) who is responsible for The International Standard of Service Excellence, the world’s only truly global customer service benchmark, says the customer experience in the GCC should always respect and support the region’s cultural diversity.

Forrest, who also chairs the European Business Awards’ judging panel, said in the UAE, customer experience management also needs to reflect and support the country’s wider aspirations. 

“The UAE is a major trade and international tourist destination with its airports not only the busiest in the world but also carrying over 10 million passengers - a number that exceeds the population of the UAE of all nationalities and is around 20% of the total GCC population. In the public sector too many organisations are already at the leading edge in their sectors. So the challenge for Customer Experience Management in the UAE is how to deal respectfully, successfully and professionally with a widely diverse range of expectations,” explained Forrest, who is a founder Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. 

Forrest said the way ahead for UAE customer service practitioners is to set its targets high and try to treat every customer as an individual and deliver the service in a way that they need. 

“In the UAE organisations should aim to be, not just the best in the region but the best in the world, someone has to be and as its airlines have proven, there is no reason why it cannot be many organisations across the UAE. Being the global best means that the margin for customer disappointment is greatly reduced,” explained the author of ‘Sold On Service’ the first European book on service quality management. 

And Forrest says that organisations with engaged employees have customers who have greater loyalty to their products and services. “It is an organisation’s employees who influence the behaviour and attitudes of customers, and it is customers who drive an organisation’s profitability through the purchase and use of its products and services. In the end, customers who are more satisfied with an organisation’s products are less expensive to serve, use the product more, and, hence, are more profitable or cost effective customers,” he explained.