Arabs happy, Asians content, Americans grumble

According to a Customer Satisfaction Survey released by the service standards group Ethos Consultancy, while 88.9 per cent of respondents from nations in the Middle East were pleased or impressed with local customer service standards, just 15.9 per cent of expatriates from the Americas agreed it was adequate.

Just over half of Asians from the subcontinent (50.9 per cent) were content with the level of service compared to back home, according to the survey, as reported in The National on Saturday.

“The nationality analysis we did was to ask something we’ve never asked before,” Robert Keay, the managing director of Ethos, was quoted as saying.

Only a third of all respondents (34 per cent) were satisfied with customer service across the UAE, whereas 43 per cent were dissatisfied.

Nearly half (49 per cent) of all surveyed also felt service was below that of their native countries. Those with the highest standards and poorest experiences were people from the Americas with 85 per cent saying service was worse than their home country, followed by Australia/Southeast Asia expatriates (84 per cent) as well as Europeans (73.9 per cent).
The happiest customers, who felt the standards were better than their country of origin, were from the Middle East (88.9 per cent) and Africa (63.4 per cent).