Contact Center Technology - A Cultural Change in the Middle East

Increasing competition is forcing businesses to pay much more attention to satisfying customers, including providing memorable customer service.
Time and again studies have shown that customer service plays an important role in customer’s loyalty. While many businesses in this part of the world don’t believe the notion that customers are willing to trade- in few pennies to get better service, the reality is that consumer are expressing in many different dialects that they would love to reach their providers for solutions. Studies have also proved that consumers could be easily lost because of poor customer care or the lack of it.
In a recent study conducted by Genesys (http://www.genesyslab.com/ ), over 4,200 consumers in the Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States were surveyed in order to better understand consumer attitudes toward contact centers and customer service. Some of the survey‘s findings were as follows:


- 38% of consumers say that customer service has the biggest impact on their loyalty to a company

- 75% say they would do business with a company based on a great contact center experience

- 15% would do so even if prices were higher than average

- 50% say the last time they stopped doing business with a company was partly or wholly due to poor customer service


In the Middle East, mobile phone operators are to be credited for the introduction of customer service, but also are to be blamed for the bad habits in the customer care industry. The increased numbers of mobile operators and the increased demand for mobile phones have started some sort of culture change in the customer care business. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia alone there are three operators. To give you an idea of the amount of business these operators are doing, Mobily – largest mobile phone operator in the Kingdom- made 778 million riyals ($207.5 million) in the three months leading to December 31st 2008, which is 51 percent higher than the 514.4 million riyals ($137.2 million) it made a year-earlier according to Business .com (http://www.arabianbusiness.com/544331-saudis-mobilys-q4-profits-up-51-beats-estimates) . Zain Saudi Arabia, an affiliate of Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co (Zain), started operating a third mobile phone network in the third quarter of 2008 which will change the whole formula for other operators. When competition starts companies start searching for their niche in the market to compete. With this impressive numbers of profits, the idea of trying to talk to a customer service representative in less than half an hour is dream yet to come true for many consumers. For a consumer to reach a customer service representative within a reasonable period of time has proven to be an impossible task. Mind you also that a customer has only has one shot a day to speak to a representative and then banned or his/her number is blacklisted for that day until the next day. This policy is justified by heavy traffic of calls at all times (this is to tell you how efficient the contact center system is and how much effort is put into training customer service representatives) and the moralstand point of love for others what you love for thyself. Not that a customer can not call his/her provider twice a day, but the second will be an adventure in an endless IVR journey set up by an IT guru who has no basic knowledge of customer service. In general, amongst the bright minds of GMs and Marketing Directors in our part of the world none have realized that strong customer care can be a company’s niche in the market. Unfortunately there is more focus on branding out of strong belif that a solid product will cover the rest. The idea has always been and remains to be that a solid product in the market will always guarantee customer retension.

However, with all the deficiencies of customer care in the GSM world, they are credited for the least which is initiating some sort of customer service. The issue becomes more serious with companies that totally lack any kind of connection to their customers. For many companies, about the only connection they have to their customers is through the company’s PBX system. I am talking about Multimillion dollars companies such as car rental companies, major FMCG companies, technology companies , banks, Insurance companies and most of all marketing companies that should know better. The only little information customers can get on these companies is by walking to these companies, through word of mouth, or through advertisement.

In an era where everything is mobile, GMs still lack the vision to understand that customers have choices, and most importantly customers are making more educated decision than they used to in a monopoly world. No doubt, there are still technological limitations, but the biggest challenge is the human mind. In the 21st Century companies worldwide are striving to exceed customer expectation by making customer service a memorable experience to acquire and retain customers. In our world educating company’s decision makers is at its early stages. I am hopeful that we will eventually get there, because competition will set the rules just like technology forces itself on people and societies.