Business | Technology

Call to extend customer service model in UAE to digital world

Private sector in the UAE lagged far behind in web-based content management, with most websites providing web experience dating back to 1999-2000, it has emerged at Gitex.

  • By Natasha Marrian, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 23:45 October 21, 2008
  • Gulf News

Dubai: Private sector in the UAE lagged far behind in web-based content management, with most websites providing web experience dating back to 1999-2000, it has emerged at Gitex.

According to James Murray, vice president of Interwoven for the EMEA region, a global content management solutions pro-vider, the customer service model the UAE has implemented in almost all sectors of the economy should be taken to the digital world as well.

"The customer experience you get in Dubai when you walk into Atlantis or the Burj Al Arab or a shopping mall is amazing. It's probably the best in the world," he said. "But then when you go onto a website, it's like Dubai was 20 years ago. Can you imagine if you walked into a high street store and you opened the door and there was nothing but dusty foundations there and poor decoration and bad lighting, that's a little bit like the web experiences are in a lot of companies here," he said.

Murray said companies in the region needed to start looking at where their sources of wealth are coming from and added that revenue is not going to come from investment in hardware or business intelligence which is where the majority of the money seems to be going.

"Companies here need to be more innovative within the web channel. They need to look at customer service and how they can drive more revenue through that channel," he said.

Interwoven has partnered with Al Futtaim Technologies as a link to the market in this region.

Al Futtaim Managing Director Anil Kumar said the company has recognised the untapped potential of the web and that the market was ready for more mature web content.

"For us the web has a huge untapped potential for the market," he said.

"If you look at the web presence and the usage of the web by most of the expatriates that come into this part of the world, I think they want good content, they want personalised content, they want effective content," he said.

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