Customer service excellence in UAE ‘better than many countries, particularly European’

Philip Forrest, president of Dubai-based International Customer Service Institute, says the customer experience in the GCC should always respect and support the region’s cultural diversity.

People wait to be served at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre customer service area. Reem Mohammed / The National

With more than 200 nationalities living in the Emirates, the UAE is among the most culturally diverse countries in the world. In many respects it is regarded as a strength, but when it comes to customer service diversity is a challenge, says Philip Forrest, president of the Dubai-based International Customer Service Institute. The organisation is responsible for The International Standard of Service Excellence, the world's only truly global customer service benchmark. Mr Forrest says good customer service is about understanding the whole trip the customer is going to make, from the time the organisation first comes into contact.

How does the UAE’s cultural diversity make customer service more difficult?

You have amazing cultural diversity in the UAE, both in its population and in its tourism industry. All those people have their expectations of what service quality is. And also a lot of those people have cultural expectations about the way people should behave towards them, and they vary depending on where you come from. If you are in any one of the sectors that is delivering anything to any one of those people, whether it be tourism, transportation or any kind of commercial relationship, you have to take into account the cultural expectations of the people you are dealing with. Because dealing with people from America is incredibly different to dealing with people from Japan and dealing with people from Russia is different to dealing with people from South Africa.

Can you give an example of how different cultures expect different treatment?

If you are dealing with people from Islamic cultures then you have to have a way of dealing with genders in a way that respects those cultures because if you don’t you will actually offend them. If you meet a lady you shouldn’t shake hands with her. It’s a very simple and a very small thing, but it is the kind of thing which makes the difference of someone having a good customer service and not having a good customer service.

What about other cultures? How do they differ?

If you deal with somebody in the UK or Europe or are trying to do a deal with an organisation in the USA ... getting to these senior executives is actually quite difficult. If you want to do the same thing with an organisation in Japan, getting to the top person, providing you have some sort of credible story, is actually relatively simple but you will never do a deal with the top person in Japan. However, you can do a deal with the top person in the US.

How do you view customer service in the UAE?

People in the UAE appear always to be looking outside for new ideas and new benchmarks, and that’s a good thing. But I believe that service excellence in the UAE is actually better than it is in many other countries of the world, particularly European countries. Part of that is the fact that the UAE government actually promotes service excellence within the government organisations, which is highly unusual. In fact the first organisation to achieve the International Customer Service Standard, as it was called then, was in fact the Dubai Economic Department. And that must have been about seven or eight years ago.

What about retail?

It is just as bad as it is in the rest of the world. Retail service quality is still not particularly good anywhere. There are two sorts of service in retail in the UAE. One is where people follow you around. The other [type] completely ignore you. However, there are pockets of very good service in some stores. Some of the stores in the Gold Souk look after you, and they are very honest, open, quick and very thorough.

What can companies do to improve their customer service?

For people who work in shops, ask yourself the question: what is that person there to assist the customer to do? And that is to assist the customer to make the right purchase choice. If you understand it is the role of the retail assistant to assist them to buy, not try to force them to buy and not try to irritate them or aggravate them and generally get on their nerves, then you begin to look at that from a slightly different perspective. But that’s a leadership issue. If the people who are running the business don’t get that it’s never going to work.

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