Service Hero, the regions only independent and neutral consumer powered customer satisfaction index, today declared the launch of its 2019 mid-year results for the UAE, which announced an overall satisfaction score of 77.6 points between January and June. Nine out of 14 industry categories in the country scored above 80 points offering a desirable level of service, while two categories bottomed out as a result of not doing the bare minimum to meet the desires of their customers.

Based on a total of 2,609 customer assessments that met the strict validation criteria to ensure sample integrity and rigor, the Service Hero Customer Satisfaction Index demonstrated that overall performance experienced a slight decline as compared to 79.2 points recorded in the same period last year. This sample is rigorous and representative on a national level, however; the assessments continue to run until end of year, and are available to consumers to share their voices and positively impact the standards of service excellence.

While no category met the criteria of incredible service with 90 points and more to include in the Heroic rankings, Electronics, Arab Airlines, Furniture, Cafs, Casual Dining, Fast Food, Clothes, New Car Sales, and Super Markets received Good rates of satisfaction from consumers in the country. Car Service and Hospitals fell in the Ordinary rankings with an average level of service, whereas Retail Banks ranked 69.7 to be ranked as Bland with a bare minimum level of service. Meanwhile, Mobile Operators and Islamic Banks were the lowest-scoring industries with Unheroic rankings. The two categories fell short of customer expectations by more than 17 points as compared to the overall Index average.

Remarking on the study results, Faten Abu-Ghazaleh, President of Service Hero, stated: Since the launch of the index in the UAE in 2016, private companies in the country had demonstrated continuous improvement in customer satisfaction scores. However, as our 2019 mid-year results reveal, consumers were not as happy and satisfied with the services provided in the first half of this year as they were in the corresponding periods in the previous years.

With our extensive survey, we expect to enable brands to increase deeper insights into the needs and demands of consumers and build and promote an organization-wide culture that dully understands the importance of service excellence. The Companies in the UAE can continue to win the loyalty and trust of customers by improving their systems and processes and enhancing the customer service skills of their teams in line with our eight service benchmarks, Abu-Ghazaleh included.

It is worth highlighting that Arab Airlines is the main category that showcased continued growth in customer satisfaction scores since 2016. In spite of their tremendous progress in enhancing performance levels between 2016 and 2018, Mobile Operators and Islamic Banks suffered a plunge in their ratings in 2019.

More than350 brands were assessed in the Service Hero Customer Satisfaction Index, which estimated each industry category across up to eight service dimensions, which are reliability, speed, product quality, and staff attitude, value for money, location, call center, and website quality. These dimensions were assessed on a 'before and after experience' basis to evaluate the difference between customer expectations of service and actual satisfaction with the service.

Service Hero adheres to ESOMAR principles (the European society of opinion and market research) and is managed by an independent Advisory Council. The Advisory Council includes the Director of Research from the American Customer Satisfaction Index as well as academic and independent members from leading private universities in Kuwait and the UAE and established companies, such as the Boston Consulting Group.