Service standards impact customer turnover

At a private function held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dubai, attended by some of the region's leading customer-service driven organisations, Xceed, together with COPC Inc. (Customer Operations Performance Center Inc.), stressed the need for benchmarking regional performance against global best practices to ensure customer loyalty and even survival in a competitive environment.

Dr. Adel Danish, Chairman & CEO, Xceed Professional Services stated,

"Xceed's presence in the region, and namely in Dubai, has been met with a lot of opportunities for growth. The presence of the Minister of Development for Government Sector, H.E Sultan Al Mansoori, is a manifestation of the UAE's government interest and support for the importance of customer care in the services industry."

"Achieving customer satisfaction and loyalty is the result of deploying structured processes and managing the customer experience as a complete process," said Mr. Ahmed Refky, Managing Director, Xceed Professional Services.

"There are certain performance measurement criteria that need special attention within an organization. Without knowing what these criteria are, and taking the right approach to improving them, customer service quality could never reach the desired level of excellence. What seems like the smallest issue could be the 'make or break' aspect of the business. Today, excellent customer service is not just about being polite to the customer, who expects a great deal more from his or her provider of choice than to sell their product."

Earlier this year, Xceed Professional services became the sole implementation partner in the region for COPC, the worldwide authority on certifying, operating, and monitoring best practices in contact centers. Acting as a resource for regional businesses, Xceed will work closely with customer service centers across a number of industries, including telecommunication, banking and retail, to help develop a multi-dimensional approach to customer communication.

"The implementation of the COPC Standards develops and drives initiatives that result in superior performance in customer-touch intensive environments, as measured by the criteria of customer service, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency," said Cliff Moore, Chairman and Co-founder of COPC Inc.

"These initiatives are developed and implemented by members of the organization as well as industry experts in a collaborative, consortium environment. What this means is that once the initiative is completed, the organization and its people have the knowledge they need to drive the customer service process independently."

The process focuses on a number of aspects such as call handling time, first call resolution, service agent's knowledge of products and services and most importantly, the ability to listen to customers and efficiently provide them with a complete and accurate answer. The COPC-2000® CSP Standard, first released in 1996, is the first and only global certification designed specifically to guarantee contact center excellence worldwide.