Customer Service in an Emerging Market (UAE)

Literature Review

Recent research by Ethos Consultancy found that there were some significant improvements in the way banks in the UAE treated their customers over the last year but many are still lagging behind (Maceda, 2010). This study, the sixth Annual Bank Benchmarking Index for service excellence of 21 banks in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, found the overall performance of customer service in the UAE banks increased marginally this year. The response times to customer enquiries and the quality of their websites needed improvement. In another study, on customer service provision in banks in the UAE, financial institutions were refocusing on improving customer service and banks started best practices on how to manage the crisis (Remo-Listana, Karen, 2009). In Kuwait, Gulf Bank on the other hand developed a service excellence “scorecard” to support the banks delivery of superior service (Jones, 2004). The key factors measured by Gulf Bank were: customer satisfaction complaints, comments and attrition, plus internal process delivery performance for critical products (customer loans and credit card services). The outcome of implementing the service excellence “scorecard” was the improvement in service quality.