First Middle Eastern Operator to take on rigorous global certification

Dubai, UAE, 09 March 2008 - Etisalat is well under way to becoming the first operator in the GCC region to be certified by the global authority on customer service standards - Customer Operations Performance Center International Inc. (COPC International Inc.) COPC International Inc. is working with Etisalat through its sole regional implementation partner, Xceed Professional Services. The full evaluation and training programme is expected to take between 9 and 12 months to complete.

"Customer delight is a critical component of our brand identity and promise," said Mohammed Al Fahim, Vice President, Customer Care Centre, Etisalat. "Achieving certification from COPC Inc. is an important step in our strategy and highlights the rigorous steps we are taking to ensure that our customers receive a consistent, courteous and efficient service every time they call, and for every request they make."

A team of consultants from Xceed Professional Services consultants measured the Etisalat Customer Care Centre's performance against global benchmarks and its compliance to the COPC-2000® CSP Standard by ranking every aspect of the operation. All the data was audited - including data from customer surveys - in order to examine agents' knowledge of services, their approach to dealing with customers, their overall ability to handle a call and the impression the customer is left with at the end of the call.

Etisalat has invested over AED 100m in customer care infrastructure in the UAE. Today it employs over 1200 agents, and offers services in four languages for e-vision, telephone, Internet, mobile and corporate customers. Etisalat also offers fully automated outsourcing solutions, and a range of agent-based services including inbound and outbound customer care, technical support, telesales, and telemarketing using multiple communication channels. Etisalat was awarded Customer Care Provider of the year 2006 by CommsMEA magazine and is ISO 27001:2005 and ISO 9001 certified.

According to Mohamed Fouad, COPC Services Manager, Xceed Professional Services, this process is entirely quantitative. "There is no subjectivity in this process. It is a set of stringent performance measurement techniques, based on data collection and analysis. During the assessment phase, we worked very hard with the Etisalat team to ensure the integrity of the data collected, and focused very strongly on getting specific results. This is why we are now ready to proceed with the COPC® Certification Process. Increasingly sophisticated customers demand support from agents with a more advanced skill set than before. Having a robust framework means the operator can deploy resources effectively, increase customer satisfaction and drive down operational costs."

The COPC-2000® CSP Standard, first released in 1996, is the first and only global certification designed specifically to guarantee contact centre excellence worldwide.

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About Etisalat
Etisalat has been the telecommunications service provider in the United Arab Emirates since 1976. Since then, it has built up state-of-the-art telecom infrastructure and taken a leadership position of innovation and reliability among regional and international operators. Etisalat has now expanded to manage and operate telecom companies in 13 other markets.

The Middle East magazine has ranked Etisalat first in the United Arab Emirates and fourth in the Middle East among the top 100 companies, based on its financial performance and capital growth. The corporation was also identified as one of the top 500 companies based on market capitalisation by the 'Financial Times'. The World Economic Forum, in its annual 'Global Information Technology Report 2006-07', has ranked the UAE as the leading country in the Arab world for 'Networked Readiness', with a worldwide ranking of 29.

About Xceed Professional Services
Xceed Professional Services is the Middle East's leading specialist for customer contact enhancement, providing service organisations with the most powerful tools to guarantee measurable and improved customer service levels. Xceed Professional Services helps organisations to unlock extra value from their customer contact facility and enhance their customer relationship at every touch point in their operations.

Xceed Professional Services is the sole Customer Operations Performance Centre Inc. (COPC Inc.) implementation partner in the MENA region. COPC Inc. is the leading global authority on operational Best Practices for improved service and quality, reduced costs and increased customer satisfaction.

About COPC Inc.
Customer Operations Performance Center Inc. (COPC Inc.) is the world's leading authority on operations management and performance improvement for buyers and providers of customer contact center and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. The COPC® Performance Management System includes operational certification programs, operational management training, Six Sigma in Contact Centres, performance improvement consulting, and vendor sourcing and management services.

Since 1996, COPC Inc. has helped organisations in more than 50 countries drive results averaging two to five times Return on Investment (ROI) with a payback of less than one year. These results are achieved by leveraging the COPC® Family of Standards, the industry's first performance management and certification system which, today, remains the most rigorous and only high performance set of global best practices and performance metrics that simultaneously increase customer satisfaction and profitability.

Global clients include Accenture, Apple, BT Group, Bertelsmann Arvato, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cable & Wireless, Citigroup, Convergys, Genpact, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, NTT, Sony, Telefónica, Telstra, and Wipro. For additional information about COPC, visit www.copc.com or email info@copc.com .

© Press Release 2008