Faten Abu-Ghazaleh, Service Hero President.

KUWAIT: Service Hero, the Arab World's only 100 percent consumer powered customer satisfaction index, honored Kuwait's top performing companies at the 2015 Customer Service Assessment Awards Ceremony, which took place at the JW Marriott - Kuwait city, on 15 February, 2016. The overall country winners are: 1st place -Infiniti, 2nd place - Boubyan Bank, 3rd place - Caribou Coffee.

The 16 industry categories that were rated in the 2015 Customer Service Assessment included cafés, casual dining, car service, clothes, electronics, fast food, fine dining, home furniture, Islamic Banks, retail banks, ISP, mobile operators, new car sale, private hospitals, regional Arab airlines and supermarkets. Each industry category was measured by Kuwait's consumers on a ten-point scale across eight service dimensions, which are reliability, speed, product quality, staff quality, value for money, location, call center and website quality.

The table below highlights the winner from each industry category, as announced at the awards ceremony. Eight of the winners are local, two are regional and six are international. Based on these findings, local operators outperform international franchises.

The results are based on an authenticated dataset of 14,860 records that give a 95 percent confidence level with a +/- 3 percent error margin.

From over 300 brands assessed, only 8 score above 8.5 on a 10 point scale which suggests exceptional focus on service excellence in these brands. Five companies are winning for the sixth time. These are Caribou Coffee, Mais Alghanim, McDonald's, Boubyan Bank and the Royal Hayat Hospital Four brands are awarded first place in their category for the first time in 2015 and these are: Zain in the ISP category, Saveco, Sakura Japanese Restaurant, and the Home Center.

Commenting on this year's results, Service Hero President Faten Abu-Ghazaleh, said: "I would like to congratulate the winners of the Service Hero 2015 Customer Satisfaction Index Awards and every other company with us here today as they represent the top 10 percent of companies in Kuwait in terms of customer service standards from among over 300 listed in our index. While we award the winners tonight, I would like to stress that excellence is not about an award. Excellence is about companies making a strategic decision to be customer centric. That means that they understand the concept of the three peaks. The first peak is the ability to fully understand customer Expectations and needs. The second peak is the ability to deliver Satisfaction compared to what customers expect. And the third peak is the connection with consumers so that they like and recommend a brand. These strategic efforts require discipline and perseverance but once a company starts on the journey of building loyal and satisfied customers it will result in long term-financial gains.

"I look forward to this year's round of assessments, , as it will be an exciting one with the recent launch of our newly revamped and transparent website; the main voting platform, and our recent expansion to the UAE. Just like any other service provider, we are keen to develop our offering and continuously present our customers with a better and more satisfying service, while extending our reach to tap into a new market that will not only allow us to cater to a larger audience but will also add to the credibility and value of the index". Abu-Ghazaleh added.

The 2016 assessments have already started since January 1st of this year and will continue till the end of the year.

The guest speaker of the evening was Jumana Abu-Ghazaleh, CEO & Founder of betwixt.us, a digital startup for professional networking. With more than 25 years of experience in the business, brand and product and marketing field, and as a leader in development, strategy, positioning, innovation and forecasting, Jumana spoke about the direct correlation of having a high-level of staff engagement with high customer satisfaction levels. She shared a statistic that 70 percent of engaged employees offer strong customer services versus 17 percent of disengaged employees.

Jumana shared experiences from Virgin Airways who work on creating employee brand ambassadors as well as Apple who have introduced "empathy geniuses". Her work with some of the world's most renowned brands such as Yahoo and Coca-Cola is used as case studies at Stanford University and has been featured in leading international publications.

Service Hero adheres to ESOMAR principles (the European Society of Opinion & Market Research). It aims to collect a robust and rigorous sample exceeding 10,000 validated assessments that reflect key demographic groups. Assessments are predominantly collected online asking 20 questions using a 10 point scale, and it deploys key processes before reporting validated and authenticated data to ensure its integrity. All scores are vetted by the well-respected American Customer Satisfaction Index, who is Service Hero's partner in the Arab world. Results are also overseen by an independent Advisory Council comprising the American University of Kuwait, Gulf University of Science & Technology, the Australian College of Kuwait, and the Kuwait Community College as well as neutral professionals from leading organizations, including the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the Boston Consulting Group, and Noor Investment Co.