Customer care in Saudi Arabia

Priscilla wrote:

Hello everyone,

The way customer services are handled can greatly affect your views on certain brands, products, companies or stores. As a consumer, it is important to get familiar with local practices regarding client assistance in Saudi Arabia and try to understand how things work in the country.

How would you describe your customer service experiences in Saudi Arabia?

Do you feel welcome when you enter a store? Do you get useful tips and advice?

Are after-sales services available in Saudi Arabia?

Thanks for sharing your experience,

Priscilla

Customer Service experience is always Worst in Saudi Arabia,either you go to any of multinational bank or any local bank and even any customer service of Telecom Operators

The golden rule of customer service here is "Customer is always wrong".

Here is how the customer service game goes in Saudi Arabia, in my view, of course.

1- You are new in the market, You need customers base. Provide excellent customer service.

2- Everyone will jump to you as good Customer Experience is scarce in KSA.

3- Congrats, you have grown a very good market share.

4- Now, you don't need many many customers because you can't make ALL of them happy. You need infinite customer experience agents and other resources which will suck your profits off. Second, not ALL of them are adequately profitable to you. So, you would you keep them? Lower the customer service. Be selective. The people who give less profits to you, make them fed up. They will go.

5- Now you have a controlled number of good customers. Increase your customer experience level so as to keep them!

Example? One bank (I won't name it), was on step1 10 years back. It passed through step 2,3,4 and now it's on step 5.

Customer Service??? I think I can count on 1 hand the times I have had good customer service in over 3 years.

Non existent in KSA especially at banks, cell phones, housing maintenance people, car dealerships, utility providers, and water delivery.

Hi everyone!
It has always been one lousy experience. I literally hate going to any customer service here as its 9 out of 10 times waste of time.  They either don't understand or don't want to understand.  And they treat expats as if when they see us it triggers in their brain " expat!! Sorry we are not here to help u". Very rarely have i found some genuine help to sort out the issues but many a times its DIY or forget it..

Customer Service facility if based here needs 1000 time improvement. I sometimes get good service

The level of customer service frustrates me. No urgency or the willingness to help.

Good Day,
I appreciate your feedback about the customer satisfaction; kindly share your experience & suggest us about the customer care & customer satisfaction.
Regards

Depend on "who is complaining" 
Customer services not equally provided

SYSTEM IS DOWN
You shall hear that if you entered any public or governmental  place.

But in private sector, it's different
since most of the replies are negative, let me share some of the places i received a good C.S.

Bookstore: Jarir Bookstore (8 of 10)
Garments & others: Centerpoint (7 of 10)
Pastry: Saaduddin (9 of 10)
Home Appliances: Extra (6 of 10)
Car Dealer: ALJ (7 of 10)

Customer Service is an activity that requires serious understanding of products/services and the manner in which it has to be delivered effectively. Different cultures have varied attitudes towards such delivery as it can easily be misunderstood to be a subservient activity, more like a servant to master relationship.

All work is service, irrespective of how, why, and to whom it is delivered to. At the end of the day we always have a service provider and a customer who receives the service. Even if you are the CEO of a company you are still providing a service to your customer or else you  cannot be in a successful business venture.

The motivation factor to generate quality customer service must certainly come from the incentives that are offered to sales/marketing people so that they understand and benefit from the rewards reaped by delivering their roles to the best of their skills. Open minded and positive attitudes are also a necessity for good customer service delivery.

It's not just a matter of the "customer is always right" but certainly an opportunity to ensure customer satisfaction even if the customer is wrong.

I  have spent about 10 years working in Saudi Arabia with my family and I didn't really face any problem with customer service
The only problems I used to have is at my work place dealing with the employees of the personal affairs 

You don't have customer services in Saudi Arabia to evaluate here.
i will be sad and angry if i have to go to any bank or other offices personally

100% agree

Hi dear,

Thanks for your message.

Please let me know about you in details before we start our conversation.


Regards,

its simply WORST,
1- you dial complaint center of any business choose English, the other person will always or mostly talk in Arabic.
2- you go to any branch of any business they will take your number and talk to you like they are doing some sort of a extra job and they weren't suppose to help you (customer support mean nothing)
3- you have to look for Pakistan, Indian, Bangali or Philippines Customer Support Worker to get the job done other wise forget warranty of any sort !!!

in my 10 years experience I have recently noticed few positive changes, now Saudi worker talk in English, they Try little more harder to do your job they are little more helpful than before, change is there but its very slow and hard to notice !!!

If you try to live in a country like France Germany or even Montreal for some time you will find great difficulty finding anybody who can help you in English and it is mandatory in some situations to speak the native language

I've read some interesting comments regarding this subject. I've been in the Kingdom for over twenty years and service has gradually improved over those years, but companies and especially government departments are far away from what we could call satisfactory service.

STC has by far the worst customer service I have ever seen of a national company in Al my travels around the globe. There are many other companies likewise, but not as blatant. I'm trying to be the devil's advocate in this topic, but it is very difficult when you have experiences like I have.

Training is a key and loyalty is another. Respect and duty are key areas which need to be explored by all companies and instilling work ethics.

The kingdom is slowly getting there.....give it another fifteen years and we should be well on our way to saying we have something to be proud of......fingers crossed.

Hi
This is only my personal opinion and experience, but I have found that in general in shops assistants are either nin-attentive or kverly enthusiastic. They don't seem to be trained in how and when to approach a customer of when to back off. However, once you forget your own little irritations about this and reach out to the sales person their are genuinly friendly and eager to assist. In restaurants the service and standards are dismal and a lot of training is required. Staff in all fields of sales need to understand that the customer comes first, not their mobile phone!

Abdulkareem179 wrote:

I've read some interesting comments regarding this subject. I've been in the Kingdom for over twenty years and service has gradually improved over those years, but companies and especially government departments are far away from what we could call satisfactory service.

STC has by far the worst customer service I have ever seen of a national company in Al my travels around the globe. There are many other companies likewise, but not as blatant. I'm trying to be the devil's advocate in this topic, but it is very difficult when you have experiences like I have.

Training is a key and loyalty is another. Respect and duty are key areas which need to be explored by all companies and instilling work ethics.

The kingdom is slowly getting there.....give it another fifteen years and we should be well on our way to saying we have something to be proud of......fingers crossed.

I am 100% agreed with you, Customer service mean to serve your customer with polite way and main key for that your warm welcome and let us feel we are in right place where we can get what we need or inquire. But totally got disappointed at several places, their attitude with customers like we are inline standing for charity.

Need to hire some educated guys in this field those are having good qualification and well manners to deal with it.

i dont see any good customer service in Saudi specially in telecos and Banks , its very poor

Till today no any new experiance in saudi

Extremely poor.

Didnt got any chance to become customer

I have plenty of bad experience specially in banks,Mobile phone companies and may be everywhere in Kingdom. They treat expats as slaves. I have recently experience with saptco ticket provider.I want to smack him.He ask my cell phone number while booking my reservation.I spoke in English and he told me badly don't speak English.If you don't know arabic  some places they wana to eat you.I went onces Zain customer care,they are true professionals and treated very well to everyone. They need to improve customer care and should educated person there. As we some come from Uk,Usa,Pakistan etc and they are mostly speak English.

In selected sit-down dining restaurants and selected hospitals, pinoys providing customer service treats you very well. However, in banks, car services, schools, grocery stores, gas stations and all other "service" oriented businesses ... rating a horrid 3 / 10 is being very generous.

The worst offenders are Riyad Bank and STC.
Even when I attempt to explain the problem, they have no understanding unless I phrase it into an adjective + noun in Arabic. STC gave me an internet kit (modem + wire) without telling me I needed to pay for the Sim card. I thought there was some way I could pay online.
And yet I remain with STC because my phone no. is connected to my bank accounts. It's just a prepaid account so I don't spend too much money.

All the Call Center in Saudi Arabia are being outsourced to India.
The left over Call Centers are only available to the Saudi's Only as per new government regulations to provide more jobs for the local people.
The salaries are very less considering the expense there are and the logistics involved.

Customer Service.?? there is only customer, service is not a part of it...

Gotta agree, customer service is shockingly bad from my experience. STC being the worst. 'System down' has become a running joke now with my friends and I.

Emilio Largo wrote:

And yet I remain with STC because my phone no. is connected to my bank accounts. It's just a prepaid account so I don't spend too much money.

I have seen the option in ATM machines to update your personal info including phone #.

It is so rare to see a high-quality customer service. I remember a funny thing about my experience is that last time I was buying shoes in Riyadh and I was going to kill the guy hanging around and doing nothing (used to be helping the customers). I managed to find the shoe I wanted including finding the location of the shoe box for my size.
When I return back to my country I was almost going to kiss the seller as he was soo professional in his service.

Let me tell you an experience i had with alrajhi bank. I happened to open a bank account  through online portal. I received a message receiving IBAN number and welcome message and to visit branch to activate the account and get debit card.. It took  them 7 hours to do that.

Yes i feel that 

Most of the time it is observed that sales promotion are advertised in Arabic language as if it is meant only for Arabs. I have never seen any promotional gift claimed by non Arab expatriate.

Not good..... I feel so because, had very worst experiences in banks/network-service-providers over this 6 months of duration.
Needs to improve a lot and I am sure it takes long time here.

Give Saudi another 100 years.............