Experts warn of customer service decline during GITEX

The positive hype around the biggest regional IT event of the year can easily be damaged if organisations do not provide excellent service to the 6,000+ exhibitors as well as over 110,000 trade visitors, warns Xceed Professional Services, the premier customer contact consultancy in the region and sole COPC implementation partner.

"Every service organisation can make money during a massive event like GITEX. That includes taxi companies, car rental agencies, real estate agents, hotels, restaurants, airlines. But the key to greater success is leveraging this event to build a bigger, stronger customer base that will remain loyal to your company, create referrals, and build an all round pleasant experience for Dubai's visitors," said Ahmed Refky, managing director, Xceed Professional Services. "Hotels in Dubai witness 100% occupancy that time of year. How many phone calls and emails do they receive for booking requests, changes, cancellations? Sometimes businesses hire additional temporary staff to manage the rush during this high season. But this could create more issues than solutions, as staff are not properly trained, and there is no process in place to manage the flood of incoming enquiries."

According to a news release issued by the Dubai World Trade Centre, GITEX 2005 welcomed over 1,163 exhibitors representing over 2,724 companies form 61 countries. This turnout topped that of 2004 by 48%. If GITEX 2006 grows at that rate, then the numbers this year can be expected to double. A large number of visitors means a very high increase in demand for the services offered by the city of Dubai. Xceed predicts that this will also cause a rise in the influx of calls to the service organisations. "To keep up with the increase in requirements, and need to ramp up on resources, organisations in Dubai should be looking into adopting the international standard for customer contact operations, the COPC Performance Management System," continues Refky.

The COPC-2000 Standards have reduced cost, improved revenue, increased service and quality and increased customer satisfaction. The COPC framework establishes a guideline for implementing high performance management techniques and provides for a common language for managing relationships and communications. These techniques would take an organisation through the rush of events like GITEX, smoothly and without the need to suddenly double resources.

"The key issue here is that the aggressive competition between businesses to serve the influx of Dubai visitors drives an urgent need to make 'bigger, better' promises to attract customers. However, businesses should be careful because they need to live up to these promises, and deliver the service that customers expect from them. It sounds simple enough, but almost none of the local service organisations can quantify their customer satisfaction levels today, or benchmark them against international standards," Refky ended.

Xceed Professional Services will be present at GITEX 2006 for the first time, exhibiting in Hall 8, stand number C8-10.