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ENHANCING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

From the DAMAC Cares campaign to the Voice of the Customer survey, DAMAC has implemented a series of initiatives to enhance the experience for investors and residents

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A client-first approach is paramount to success in the real estate industry. And at DAMAC, customer satisfaction has always been and will continue to be a primary focus. Promising a comfortable, convenient and hassle-free experience for investors, residents and tenants alike, the customer relations team and community management departments at DAMAC work together to deliver the group’s vision.

“We truly care for our customers,” said Ali Sajwani, Managing Director at DAMAC Properties. “We tailored our approach to be more customer-centric rather than operations-centric or transaction-centric. But it was not a simple journey to get there.”

Along the way, a whole host of changes have been made to DAMAC’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) department. The team introduced several upgrades, in terms of transforming operations and quality assurance, to enhance the customer experience.

BACK TO BASICS

DAMAC believes that an excellent customer service team is integral to delivering exceptional customer service. That is why the department has invested in a dedicated training team for its CRM representatives.

“We have developed an intensive programme to train the operations team, the CRM team, the contact centre staff, account managers and the happiness centre staff. But that’s not all. We also extended this training to our colleagues in facilities management and other areas that involve customer interaction. This was done in order to ensure that we are using similar standards across all departments with the customers,” said Sajwani.

DIGITAL ENHANCEMENTS

Supporting the team is a host of digital resources that helps enhance the customer experience. From the DAMAC Living app – a one-stop solution for investors, residents and tenants to manage their property – to the newly launched ticketing help desk system, technology is a vital part of the customer journey at DAMAC.

“With the DAMAC Living App, we now have many online services available for customers to navigate from the comfort of their homes. But this isn’t where we left off. In fact, we took our digital initiatives to the next level by introducing a Whatsapp chat and integrating chatbots within our CRM software. The goal was to make it smoother for clients to engage and interact with us. This has made it easier for clients to reach us and raise any type of requests, such as making payments, move-in permits, maintenance, booking amenities, visitor management, and general enquiries from the comfort of their homes. This is another way to increase approachability and ensure 24/7 customer care availability.

“An additional tool we rolled out recently is the ticketing tool, which was introduced to optimise the way in which we interact with customers. As we usually receive a wide range of enquiries and requests, providing resolutions to these different types of customer transactions requires a lot of cross-functional interaction between different departments. The new ticketing tool now allows us to track these requests. This means that every single interaction with the customer is logged as a ticket in the system, which also generates automatic notifications to deliver a 360-degree journey to our clients.”

DAMAC CARES

In continuation of its commitment to customer satisfaction and happiness, the company launched a first-of-its-kind DAMAC Cares campaign. Designed to enhance the customer experience by listening to feedback, the campaign aimed to shift from a reactive CRM approach to addressing concerns in a proactive manner. Spearheaded by the CRM department, the initiative saw kiosks placed across the majority of buildings and communities, where residents and investors were invited to offer their feedback on various aspects of the DAMAC living experience.

“We met thousands of customers and received responses from these surveys in which they shared their views and areas for improvement, which we acted on. Then, we went back to our customers to follow up on their experience and noticed that there was a big improvement in the way they previously felt about these concerns.”

To further develop customer relationships, the team conducted CRM roadshows to engage with customers and listen closely to their concerns. This was recently done in Qatar, followed by a get-together for homeowners at the newly completed DAMAC Tower Nine Elms in London. Furthermore, the CRM team in collaboration with LOAMS (the facilities management team) arranged events at DAMAC Hills and DAMAC Hills 2 to engage with clients and children during their time out.

THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER

Every growing company has ideas coming from all different directions and DAMAC believes that the one that stands out is the input received from clients.

“At DAMAC, we look at building the business from the outside in, which means that we need to listen to the voice of the customer. This allows us to take helpful actions consistently and cultivate both positive reviews and constructive feedback. At every stage of the customer journey, we run surveys to collect customer insight.

“To further enhance the customer journey, we also launched a mystery shopping campaign for the first time. This involves having mystery shoppers on the ground to assess what the customer journey is really like, from the moment they meet us at the booth, call us, register online or make an enquiry until they buy the apartment, it gets handed over and they move in. It lets us know how it feels from the customer’s perspective and the areas in which we can improve. This outside-in approach has proved very healthy for the long-term success of the company.”

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