Reporting the latest results on customer satisfaction in Kuwait for 2017, Service Hero, the Kuwait based and the region’s only consumer powered customer satisfaction index, closed the doors to the 2017 assessments with 19,356 validated votes from a total of 24,024. The research showed that there was a 1.5% satisfaction increase among Kuwait’s consumers. The increase is a direct indication of the slow but surely steady enhancement in service excellence across private companies; a key pillar for the success of any organization.
Consumers’ assessments of private companies were held across 17 industry categories. These include cafés, casual dining, fast food, fine dining, new car sale, car service, clothes, electronics, home furniture, retail banks, Islamic Banks, ISP, mobile operators, private hospitals, regional Arab airlines, and supermarkets. Each industry category was measured by consumers on a 10-point scale across eight service dimensions, which are reliability, speed, product quality, staff attitude, value for money, location, call center and website quality.
Kuwait’s overall score for 2017 remains in the moderate range at 76.6 points with a 1.5% increase in satisfaction per year.
The scores across these eight service dimensions showed that actual satisfaction scores have been consistently high for Staff and Reliability, whereas Value for Money scored the lowest, as shown in figure (2) below. Dimension gaps on the other hand, showed that Kuwait is not meeting consumer expectations as they fell 6.4 points short of actual satisfaction, mainly for Value for Money and Speed.
Commenting on the 2017 findings, Service Hero President, Faten Abu-Ghazaleh said: “One of the most interesting findings we recorded for 2017 was a 38% increase in consumers who engaged with Service Hero for the first time. I consider this a significant milestone on so many levels, but mainly because this indicates that so many more of Kuwait’s consumers have come to realize that there is a transparent and credible platform that they can utilize to make their voices heard and more importantly, make a difference in enhancing the quality and standards of the services they receive. This is the ultimate objective of the index we operate, to make people happier.”
“In order to ensure that the index offers consumers the utmost transparency and additional value, consumers can visit www.servicehero.com and view both the star rating of 300 brands across 17 categories and also read the reviews of other consumers about these brands.” Abu-Ghazaleh added
Service Hero adheres to ESOMAR principles (the European society of opinion and market research) and is overseen by an independent Advisory Council, including its official partner; the American Customer Satisfaction Index. It has an Advisory Council of academic and independent members from leading private universities as well as established companies, such as the Boston Consulting Group, and Noor Investment Co. to assure results that are impartial, objective and accurately reflect people's preference, making Service Hero’s findings a credible benchmark that offers transparent and relevant insight for companies.
“The value of the Service Hero Customer Satisfaction Index and the results it records on a yearly basis are imperative to the overall development of an economy. As a globally accredited index which offers transparent and credible data, Service Hero places emphasis on service excellence and offers an in-depth understanding of what credible data can offer a service provider, and in turn, elevates the performance of individual companies in specific, and ultimately an industry as a whole. That said; Service Hero endeavors to support private companies with researching and defining their challenges and deploying important data in a way that allows companies to address those challenges. It also contributes by providing guidance and recommendations on how to improve performance. I strongly believe that raising service standards and enhancing performance across all industries are key contributors to the New Kuwait Strategy, and the value of the index is directly associated and a key contributor to achieving its main objective; to create a regional hub.” Abu-Ghazaleh added.
Additional findings from the 2017 index and research showed that based on the Kuwait Actual Index across all 17 categories, 10 categories scored above the Kuwait index, whereas the lowest scoring categories were ISPS, Mobile Operators, Private Hospitals and Electronics.
In terms of actual satisfaction, the most satisfied consumers were: Women, Non-Arabs, 16-17 years, and Diploma holders, whereas the lowest were: Kuwaitis, 50-59 years, Males, and those who hold a Master or PHD. Expectations were not exceeded by any of the 17 categories. However; factors that pushed scores up or pulled them down in Kuwait across industries were defined as per figure 4 below. The CSI for Kuwait is 76.5 points which is 1.3 points lower than the UAE Index which is 77.9 points.
Since 2010, the Service Hero Index has measured over 140,000 consumer voices, marking its 8th year of reporting in Kuwait and it’s second in the UAE since its expansion in 2016. Today; with its determination to make a difference in the standards of service excellence across Kuwait, Service Hero will continue to use its in depth market insight, research and data to contribute to the development of service providers and the private sector as a whole.