Boubyan Bank, Qatar Airways, Mais Al-Ghanim overall country winners

KUWAIT: Faten Abu-Ghazalah, president, Rafaela Bianchi, head of customer experience of Du, Adel Al-Majed, Vice Chairman & CEO of Boubyan Bank, Mona Dabbah, group customer service director at Al-Shaya. —Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat

KUWAIT: Service Hero, the region's only consumer powered customer satisfaction index, awarded yesterday the winners of its Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) for the year 2017 at Symphony Hotel in Salmiya. "Our aim today is to award the companies that work hard for the satisfaction of their customers. Building a culture of service excellence requires consistent effort and taking action to create value for customers. We've all had our good and bad service experiences. And now there is a way to express these feelings in a secure and reliable way," Service Hero President Faten Abu-Ghazaleh said.

Abu-Ghazaleh told Kuwait Times it's not about the award, but about companies making a strategic decision to be customer-centric. "Companies in Kuwait will make progress in serving customers better when they understand the concept of customer expectations and needs. 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," she said.

Abu-Ghazaleh said Service Hero is keen to develop its offerings and continuously present customers with a better and more satisfying service. Active members who are reviewing the services of the companies will be rewarded by getting badges of expert, ambassador and influencer in the more than 80,000-member community. The rating platform empowers consumers to rate the service quality of places they visit. Your ratings tell companies their strengths and weaknesses and how they compare with competitors, she said.

She noted that Service Hero is a partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, member of ESOMAR and backed by an independent advisory council, ensuring results that are impartial, objective and that accurately reflect the voice of the consumer.

The overall country winners are: 1st place - Boubyan Bank, 2nd place - Qatar Airways and 3rd place - Mais Al-Ghanim.

The 16 industry categories that were rated in 2017 included cafes, casual dining, car service, clothes, electronics, fast food, fine dining, home furniture, Islamic banks, retail banks, ISPs, mobile operators, new car sales, private hospitals, regional Arab airlines and supermarkets. Each industry category was measured by Kuwait's consumers on a 10-point scale across eight service dimensions, which are reliability, speed, product quality, staff quality, value for money, location, call center and website quality.

The winners of the café category: Caribou Cafe casual dining. Car service and new car sales category: Infiniti. Clothes category: American Eagle. Electronics category: Eureka. Fast food category: McDonalds. Home furniture category: Home Center. Casual Dining category: Mais Al-Ghanim. Islamic banks category: Boubyan Bank. Retail banks category: National Bank of Kuwait. ISP and mobile operator category: Zain. Private hospitals category: Royal Hayat hospital. Regional Arab airlines category: Qatar Airways. Supermarkets category: Saveco .

Service Hero 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. Service Hero's assessment method is statistically rigorous, robust and relevant. From representative sample sizes to service quality checks and ratings scales, Service Hero's Index provides a rigorous annual snapshot of consumer feelings.

By Faten Omar