Dubai Municipality initiates pilot project to improve customer service

Eng. Khalid Adel Rahim Abdulla, Head of Customer Service Section at the Dubai Municipality Administrative Affairs Department, said the implementation of the Queue Management System, has thus far resulted in increasing the customer satisfaction and employee performance in the Karama Center of the municipality.

According to Eng Abdulla, the municipality used the system to identify core areas for service improvement through monitoring the number of customers attended by the various counters at the Karama office.

The QMS system, which is used in the pilot programme initiated at the Dubai Municipality's Karama branch, is an administration tool that provides more than 40 different types of reports, including a queue log, an analysis by counter number and analysis by service, information about customer arrival, statistics about customers served, waiting time and serving time analysis, and user performance by counter and by service.

Moreover, the system's features, which enable online access to remote locations where it is installed - through local and wide area networks, can deliver real time information about the performance of counter staff, their handling and service time, among other data vital to maintaining a smooth flow of patrons through a customer centre.

"Based on the reports generated we were able to pinpoint areas for service improvement and what is also important is that through this could see where we needed to open additional counters to cope with customer demand for particular services. In addition, using the QMS we were able to identify peak times at the Dubai municipality's Karama branch, thereby helping us to plan staff workflow to accommodate back office work during off-peak hours," the official said.

Eng Abdulla said, encouraged by the achievements of the system at the Karama branch, including the increase in numbers of customers served daily, and improvement in DM staff performance, there are plans to install the queue system in the main Customer Service Center at the municipality headquarters, and other municipality centers such as the Um Suqaim center.

Ashish Panjabi, General Manager, Jacky's Middle East, said that the company would be working closely with Dubai Municipality to identify other system requirements. "We are very happy Dubai Municipality selected the QMS300i as a way to implement a progressive queue management system. The system is not only a way to increase productivity and efficiency, but also to enhance the quality of service."