Al Hosani |
Mobile penetration levels are growing, currently standing at nearly 73 per cent, while Etisalat has some 60,000 multimedia messaging system (MMS) subscribers since the service was launched barely a month ago.
The survey by an independent external market research agency in the Middle East was carried out among a sample of 1,000 fixed line users, 600 Wasel pre-paid users and 400 GSM post-paid service users.
A detailed 1-5 rating scale was used: 1) not at all satisfied 2) not satisfied 3) satisfied 4) quite satisfied and 5) extremely satisfied.
"The final results were very positive with high service satisfaction levels across all services and customers, which exceeded Etisalat's targets with 98 per cent overall satisfaction," said Ahmed Al Hosani, manager, Product Development, Voice and Wireless, Etisalat.
"In addition to this there was also high customer service satisfaction at the Etisalat branches and the Contact Centre," he added.
The survey showed that among the 400 people interviewed for the GSM post-paid, 50 per cent were extremely satisfied, 34 per cent were quite satisfied, 14 per cent satisfied and 2 per cent were not satisfied.
Among the 600 Wasel pre-paid customers, 48 per cent were extremely satisfied, 34 per cent quite satisfied, 16 per cent satisfied and 2 per cent not satisfied.
Of the 1,000 people interviewed for the Fixed Line phones, 34 per cent were extremely satisfied, 33 per cent were quite satisfied, 29 per cent were satisfied and 4 per cent were not satisfied.
Al Hosani said the present UAE mobile penetration levels stand at over 72 per cent, by far the highest in the region and one of the highest in the world.
"Our competitive pricing strategy means that using a mobile is now very affordable. With inexpensive handsets readily available in the market, there is no reason why everybody should not have access to mobile communications."
The recently introduced Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) has taken off "very well" with over 60,000 users. "We are seeing about 3,000 customers daily opting for the MMS. Our aim is to have 100,000 MMS users soon," he said, adding that a lot of users are switching over to MMS enabled handsets.
The MMS tariff is also very low compared with other GCC states, he said. Etisalat has 26 fully functional customer service centres in the UAE apart from several smaller sales offices.
