Regional companies must focus more on customer-driven business practice within their current customer service models, said an expert ahead of a major call centre event in Dubai.

The Middle East Call Centre 2011 show (MECC 2011) will be held on May 31 and June 1.

Dominick Keenaghan, a veteran call centre expert and event director, went on to tell regional companies they do need to review their existing customer policies and start providing more customer-friendly service in the region.

“Many regional organisations are disappointing their existing customers and putting off new ones.  That sounds harsh but the warning signs that customers now hold the upper hand on purchases are everywhere,” said Keenaghan, the CEO at show organizer and training specialist, Insights.

“The reasons observed for this lack of customer insight include various combinations of factors.  They range from company performance measurements based on irrelevant benchmarks, an undue emphasis on low-level Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that do not give a true picture of what is happening at the customer interface, corporate inertia/resistance to change and varying degrees of functional incompetence by senior decision makers on the subject of customer service.”

“As a result important new business trends such as customer advocacy are being effectively squandered and rising volumes of negative ‘word-of-mouth’ will so damage business performance that some companies will be unable to survive,” he added.

Keenaghan continued: “Regional organisations must start treating customer service as a strategic issue as opposed to its current position in many companies as a cost centre that needs to be constantly cut back.”

“The days of CEO’s mouthing platitudes about how important customers are and then doing the opposite in practice are over.”

“Concepts and strategies as to how organisations can adapt to today’s increasingly customer-driven business environment form a major element of the proceedings at the annual Middle East Call Centre 2011 conference; if organisations want to maximize their opportunities post-recession then the time to embrace these strategies is now,” he concluded.

MECC 2011 will provide a platform for regional call centre executives to discuss easy-to-implement methods to improve customer interactions, including planning secrets and management tactics that help companies maximize their outcomes for both the short and longer terms. – TradeArabia News Service