Friday, Jun 29, 2012
The 1.2 million-square-foot Etisalat Academy in Dubai has world-class training facilities, from state-of-the-art telecom and IT labs, to sophisticated sports complex and a 260-room on-campus residence.
There is a restaurant, a sports hall, a swimming pool, an auditorium and a couple of gyms. This massive facility is no doubt a big business, but there’s something that small-scale entrepreneurs can learn from it.
For three decades, the academy has been providing consultancy and human capital development services to different companies in the Middle East. One of the reasons it has survived through the years is because of its desire to always hear what its customers have to say.
The academy has handily placed more than 50 suggestion boxes all over the facility, from each of the training rooms to the sports and leisure club, residences and restaurant, to solicit inputs and recommendations from patrons on how they can be served better.
The boxes are prominently placed and each is equipped with printed feedback forms and pens. “We value feedback and want to make it easy,” says David Brennan, general manager at Etisalat Academy.
There is a constant flow of filled out forms and every week the boxes are cleared. “We do our best to act on what advice comes from our clients. We also assess training feedback daily and survey twice yearly for our full services.”
Brennan says the feedback they receive is mostly suggestions. Complaints, where they come, are acted upon. “It’s always good to get a 360-degree feedback from staff, clients and stakeholders…We can only improve if we have feedback and for sure we have made changes based on comments,” says Brennan.
Using physical suggestion boxes is the traditional way of soliciting feedback from customers. It used to be popular back in the day when social media, Twitter and Facebook did not exist.
Today, the time-honoured box is no longer a ubiquitous feature in most commercial establishments in the UAE. A few cafes and restaurants, however, do try to collect customer feedback by handing out pre-printed forms to patrons.
The traditional box has, in many cases, been replaced by electronic communications such as email, websites or social network sites, observes Colin Beaton, managing director of Limelight Creative Services, a boutique retail strategy and design firm in Dubai. It’s simply a more efficient and economic means for business receiving customer feedback.
But the suggestion box is still an important management tool for organisations, especially small businesses, to improve. “They remain a solid relationship tool for a smaller business who wants to maintain a very personal level of service or one-to-one connection with their customers,” says Beaton.
“Suggestion boxes are also important to brands with a heritage/history component. They have a certain traditional charm about them. They remind us of the time when things were simpler and you had a direct human relationship with your local merchant.”
He points out that customers desire to be heard and prospective clients want to hear the opinions of past customers as reference for decision making. Besides, in the age of the internet, it’s very easy for a disgruntled customer to go right on Facebook or Twitter and rant about their bad experience.
“The blogosphere is so widespread and popular that you have very little choice but to commit resources and staff to manage the process: you fail to engage at your own peril.”
The challenge with the physical suggestion box, however, is that they are a “closed end communication” tool, since the information is locked inside the receiving company. “There is no opportunity to share your comments with a wider audience.”
By Cleofe Maceda?Senior Reporter
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
