“Customer First” is the motto of companies and brands in times of crisis

Dubai: Hamdi Saad

Many companies and brands have turned to the concept of data-backed business due to the pressures of economic recession or the decline in expected growth rates, in an effort to provide value analysis and insight and solid returns on medium-term investments.

These companies have undertaken data analysis in an attempt to identify customer trends during this period, to come up with new visions and strategies that suit their aspirations and preferences, and to achieve satisfactory growth rates in terms of financial flows and profits. Realize the savings.

Experts in data analysis and “customer loyalty” systems and solutions emphasize that customer retention comes through the gateway to understanding his trends and aspirations, and working to meet them in the best way possible to continue growth and development.

Haitham Al-Khatib, Vice President Middle East and Africa at Sprinkler says: Customer experience is now the most important element because it defines the customer’s perception of the company or brand and defines the customers’ needs and their special conditions. It is no longer important what the company or brand says, the business itself, but what customers say about it is more important.

Knowing about customers, serving them in a completely new way and meeting their new expectations, companies or brands must use the power of data to improve retention rates for customers, which improves revenue growth, while Invespcro’s market research indicates customer use. Experience personalization methods save 83% of time and can achieve 5 to 8 times the return on investment in marketing.

The United Arab Emirates is one of the strongest countries in which “Sprinkler” operates, as companies double their investments in customer service, for example: Emirates Airlines invests about two billion dollars to improve customer experience.

Customer Experience Live’s “Intelligent” report on customer experience in 2022 shows that about 74% of companies in the region will invest more than $200,000 to improve customer experience alone.

A difficult process

Al-Khatib emphasized that companies and brands must understand that protecting customer experiences is a difficult task.

Indeed, customer behavior and expectations have changed since the start of the global pandemic. Research has revealed that online shopping in the UAE will grow by 65 to 150%. Therefore, customers expect an enhanced level of personalization when interacting with brands.

Al-Khatib said: “For our part, we help companies collect consumer feedback across multiple channels and interpret trends in consumer behaviour, giving these companies a complementary view of the customer journey. Conclusions and determinations of their feelings about the brand or product.” This information helps companies to move beyond the products and services that consumers care about and adopt a customer-centric way of thinking.

Increased productivity

Al-Khatib explained that by adopting a better customer experience strategy, companies and brands can disaggregate their own data sets to achieve a unified view of the customer, which helps them achieve many benefits such as customer retention and acquisition. Loyalty, satisfaction and participation, the integrated management of the customer experience, analyzes that companies must measure performance and return on investment, because this management starts from the indicators of revenue growth and the performance of the company and how to improve its performance. Controlling costs for indicators of increasing productivity.

Encourage competition

Mohammad Al-Zawari, Snowflake’s general manager for Turkey and Africa, says: The global telecommunications market has reached a size of around $1.5 trillion, and the rapid growth in the use of smart phones has changed customer behavior and expectations. Business providers.

Snowflake is a cloud company that specializes in developing a robust infrastructure for data storage, research, and parallel computing, allowing companies to store their data on their cloud platform, integrate isolated data, and securely share it to perform various analytical tasks. Data is essential to ensure the success of modern companies, especially as they seek to compete at scale, and global and other companies like to get a first-hand look at how they use their data to drive innovation.

Al-Zawari continued: Due to the increased use of cloud computing, we expect the demand for data analytics solutions in the UAE to grow by 20 to 25% this year compared to last year, while Snowflake has strengthened its presence in the UAE. A location in Microsoft International’s “Azure” region helps local businesses maintain the proximity of their data while strictly complying with local data regulations.

Speed ​​up operations

Gauthier Andres, Chief Technology Officer, Property Finder, said: “As a provider of real estate technology solutions, we rely on data and leverage it to deliver our services to companies and individuals. A region where data and its analytics contribute to ensuring smoother and more effective communication and coordination between business teams and customers. , which generally reflects positively on performance.

Rather than focusing on maintaining IT infrastructure, software as a service provides the ability to simultaneously provide more relevant data to consumers and customers, and contributes to making the company’s growth and development more efficient and effective. Profitability can be achieved by speeding up operations.

84% of companies invest in customer experience

Backed by SAS, a global company specializing in data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions, a study conducted by Management Review Links magazine shows that 84% of companies will increase their investments in customer experience solutions. According to the study, 62% of companies in the region and Africa plan to increase their investments in solutions to improve customer experience by 50% by 2024.

The results of the study, which covers the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, show that 22% of companies plan to spend more than double on technologies such as data analytics, personalization and smart assistants. Expectations for investment returns in the sector in the Middle East and Africa region indicate a 100% increase, from 19% currently to 38% over the next 24 months.

Andreas Heiss, Director of Customer Intelligence Solutions Europe, Middle East and Africa at SAS said: Global companies are leading their counterparts in the Middle East and Africa in terms of customer experience, with technologies helping to further accelerate the customer experience. Organizations need extensive data expertise.