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Customer Service Prioritised by UAE Retailers

DUBAI — Customer service is now higher on the priority list of UAE retailers as they scramble to persuade recession-wary customers to fork out money for their products, according to the country’s first retail benchmarking study.

Jewellery stores are the most sensitive to their customers’ needs, while watch dealerships, restaurants, cafés, and electronics stores round out the top five business sectors for customer service, the study found. The survey, conducted by the Ethos Consultancy, covered 22 business sectors.

Ladies’ fashion shops have the worst customer service, the study found. The other sectors with the worst customer service include department stores and sellers of general fashion, baby fashion and accessories, handbags and leather luggage.

Jewellery store Pure Gold was the overall best-performing brand, besting its competition in terms of sales execution and service quality. Pure Gold was followed by Second Cup, Vertu, Chilis, Ford, Mercedes, L’Occitane, Opti Fashion, Nandos and Starbucks.

Three malls stood out in terms of best outlet performance by the brands and sectors included in the study: Mall of Emirates, Ibn Batuta Mall and the Dubai Mall.

Ethos’ team of “Mystery Shoppers” made a total of 2,284 physical location visits to 558 retail outlets covering 115 brand names.

A total of 37 retail shopping locations, including 10 major malls across the UAE were covered.

Ethos Managing Director Robert Keay said the study revealed that retailers are shifting their strategies because of the economic downturn, by working harder to attract the smaller number of available customers into their shops to buy their products.

“During normal times, organisations value financial performance, but when this dips, what is their next measure? There is a direct correlation between customer service, customer satisfaction and revenue,” he said.

The consultancy’s mystery shoppers were trained researchers who inquired at each shop about various services and products. They based their rankings on two key drivers in a customer’s experience — sales execution and service quality.

The study shows that certain sectors, such car dealerships, have realised that their revenue success is a function of their ability to convert a prospect into a customer, Keay said.

“A year ago, if you want to buy a car, you will probably be in a queue of 20 other people. You can be there for hours without anybody speaking to you, you can leave without anybody talking to you. You can leave your details, and they will never call you.

“But now, when you walk in, whether it’s a high-end brand like Mercedes or a low-end brand like Ford, people pay attention to you. They take your details and call you up within 24 hours. That was alien 12 months ago, and it has been alien for the past five years,” he said.

Most retail establishments intuitively know that nothing creates repeat business better than giving importance to customers, but during good times, companies are caught up in hitting their financial targets, and customer service ranks low in their priorities.

“If the only measure of success is financial, then every store in every mall has done a great job in the last five years. But the minute sales shrink, the minute people start spending less money, it will only be the stronger ones that will remain — thosethat have invested in the right people and giving them the right training,” Keay said.

Customers are benefiting from the downturn because sales staff are now more responsive to people coming into their stores than they were a year ago, said.

“The thing that surprised us the most is how well top brands performed. Clearly, they realised that they have to do something (about the recession), and they have done it.”

Even so, Ethos’ study showed that customers want more across all brands and sectors. In terms of customer satisfaction, only 35 per cent ofcustomers were extremely satisfied with the quality of service they received. Of the others, 44 per cent were just satisfied, 13 per cent were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 7 per cent were dissatisfied, and 2 per cent were extremely dissatisfied.

Keay said the recession has brought home the point that customer loyalty is a key tool for retailers to survive the downturn.

· —rocel@khaleejtimes.com