Introduction
Under the leadership of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE has confirmed its commitment to ensuring that all ministries transform to become institutions that promote customer satisfaction and, consequently, happiness through the delivery of quality services (Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, 2018). The UAE administration seeks to achieve this objective by not only building partnerships between consumers of government services but also developing systems for measuring customer satisfaction and happiness levels. This initiative makes the UAE the first nation across the world to adopt a statewide policy that addresses the need for maintaining a happy population. This paper critically evaluates whether or not studying the concept of touchpoints supports the UAE government’s effort to becoming the happiest country in the world by ensuring high-quality service levels in all government departments. This paper conducts an extensive literature review to generate evidence regarding the effectiveness of touchpoints in improving customers’ experiences.
Aims, Objectives, and Scope of the Study
This paper aims at conducting a literature review on the concept of touchpoints with the objective of developing a sound argument regarding the extent to which they can effectively help the UAE to achieve remarkable customer satisfaction and happiness levels in all its ministries. This aim sets the scope of the current research as understanding and presenting a critical argument regarding the implications of touchpoints to the UAE government. Key quality issues facing the UAE government in achieving customer satisfaction will also be examined. Ultimately, a room emerges for providing recommendations on how the concept of touchpoints can be applied to boost customers’ satisfaction with government services.
Literature Review
The Concept of TouchPoints
The study by Stein and Ramaseshan (2016) presents a touchpoint as any mechanism or ways through which customers can interact with organizations or government institutions. Such interaction zones can be websites, person-to-person meeting avenues, and/or online applications that facilitate communication between an organization and people who use or purchase various services or products. Whenever customers deploy the above touchpoints, they gain an opportunity to leave information about their perceptions and opinions regarding the service or product supplied or bought (Stein & Ramaseshan, 2016). In the context of the UAE government, touchpoints allow users of government services to leave information concerning their experiences with various departments within this country. The UAE believes that by identifying customers’ service concerns, ministries can come up with innovative strategies that can transform all ministries into happiness centers due to the quality service delivery.
Data concerning service delivery in the UAE is pivotal in the generation of happiness and customer satisfaction indices. Utilizing touchpoints to enhance the population’s contentment levels corresponds to Khanna, Jacob, and Yadav’s (2014) argument that they allow “customers to have experienced every time they touch any part of the product, service, brand, or organization, across multiple channels and various points in time” (p. 123). The fact that satisfaction is expressed as a percentage of the number of customers reporting positive experiences with an organization implies the need for mechanisms for collecting information on reports regarding customers’ experiences. Touchpoints provide one of the ways of collecting such data. Hence, their analysis is critical in helping to present a debate on the effectiveness of the happiness initiative steered by the UAE government.
The Impact of TouchPoints on the Happiness Index and the UAE Government
Scholars have continued to examine various issues that can promote or hinder the effectiveness of applying touchpoints to the UAE as a success factor for the happiness and customer satisfaction initiative. Organizations that operate in the UAE should understand their customers’ experiences and perceptions of services and products sold to them. The first implication of touchpoints for the UAE government involves the determination of the most effective platforms to use to deliver quality services. This information can help to maximize the acquiring of data on clients’ experiences that can then be used in generating happiness and satisfaction indices. According to Khanna et al. (2014), present-day customers interact with organizations via different touchpoints available through multiple channels and social media platforms.
Khanna et al. (2014) further observe that interactions through touchpoints are social in nature. As such, they help to improve clients’ experiences. Moreover, the concept of touchpoints enables the UAE to manage multiple ministerial functions, including different external stakeholders, to help in ensuring the provision of quality services and commodities. This implication supports the UAE’s initiative of enhancing customers’ happiness through touchpoints and other mechanisms for collecting service quality opinions from the population. Although Khanna et al. (2014) support this implication of touchpoints, they appreciate that such an initiative may divert the UAE’s attention from focusing on critical issues, including customers’ end-to-end journey.
Consistent with the UAE government’s commitment to enhancing its population’s happiness levels, offices in the country have installed satisfaction survey machines, which ask people to rate their experiences. Responses were given help to determine its Happiness Index. The UAE administration has also launched several initiatives across the country, including happiness ambassadors and bliss counters, in various government entities to facilitate its goal of making people contented (Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, 2018). Arguably, this approach involves utilizing touchpoints that can help to collect data to inform its Happiness Index level. Such information has been resourceful because it has enabled this government to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the statewide policy on customer satisfaction and happiness positivity. Results of the measurement and analysis are expressed in the form of happiness indices, which indicate the criteria used by different government entities to achieve their respective customer satisfaction outcomes.
Key Quality Issues Facing the UAE Government in Achieving Customer Satisfaction
Customers’ happiness arises from their satisfaction with either services or products provided to them by organizations or states. Their satisfaction is a critical element of retaining an organization’s existing clients and attracting new ones (Xu, Peak, & Prybutok, 2015). Customers who have a remarkable organizational experience share it with other people. This aspect creates the urge among potential customers to experience the service or product offered by a particular company. The term customer satisfaction is widely applicable to marketing discourses. It refers to the degree to which services and commodities offered by an organization exceed customers’ expectations or meet their anticipations. Xu et al. (2015) define it as “the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals” (p. 175). In self-service machines, such goals may include the speed of transacting or ease of interacting with some items, including the friendliness of user interfaces.
Customer satisfaction, as an important aspect that determines the degree of clients’ positive experiences, is an important indicator of organizational performance. In competitive business environments, customer satisfaction is an essential aspect of service differentiation. Thus, it constitutes a crucial aspect of a business success strategy (Sorescu & Sorescu, 2016). In the current context, the UAE required all ministries’ employees to ensure optimal fulfillment of clients’ demands in the process of delivering services. However, an issue emerges on the ability of survey machines to produce similar effects on customers’ approval, as witnessed in the case of direct interpersonal relationships between them and ministerial workers. In responding to this issue, scholars such as Sorescu and Sorescu (2016) consider customer satisfaction as an abstract term unless studied with respect to particular parameters.
Secondly, in the UAE, customers’ level of contentment and, consequently, their happiness varies between people and the nature of products and services available. Satisfaction constitutes a psychological and a physical variable that is directly related to behaviors such as the repeated use of particular services. Self-service interaction machines that are aimed at gathering information regarding customers’ experiences have taken the place of employees who would conventionally assemble such data manually. Various UAE ministries utilize this data to analyze their extent of achieving the pillar of improved government services in line with this country’s Vision 2030. According to Shah, Jan, and Baloch (2018), this situation underlines the need for ensuring convenience of these survey machines as an important quality issue to be addressed for the UAE to achieve high customer satisfaction levels while at the same time enhancing the success of its happiness positivity initiative through touchpoints.
As earlier mentioned, the UAE administration has introduced different touchpoints such as its happiness ambassadors, survey machines, and counters located in different government agencies with the objective of collecting information regarding people’s experiences with services delivered. However, an important issue emerges concerning whether these different approaches work best when used separately or when integrated. Stein and Ramaseshan (2016) argue that any place where a product is utilized or seen forms an important point at which customers may record some experiences. Therefore, the UAE has been strategic in introducing different ways of interacting with customers in all entities where they seek services. However, Killian and McManus (2015) emphasize the UAE departments to turn different touchpoints into superlative customer satisfaction and experience avenues. The authors suggest that integrating different touchpoints may be the only primary mechanism for realizing such remarkable outcomes.
TouchPoints and the UAE’s National Agenda and Vision 2030
The UAE’s Vision 2030 focuses on ensuring that the nation acquires the status of being one of the best states across the world. As a result, it has established priority areas of improvement, including health, education, security, and housing, the economy, infrastructural developments, and government services. Touchpoints are important in evaluating customers’ experience with the UAE government’s service users. However, survey machines and software applications, including websites used for collecting data on customers’ experiences, may need to consider various issues and implications in line with this country’s Vision 2030. For example, there is the need for factoring in the usefulness and ease of use of various touchpoints as important variables that determine customers’ satisfaction with not only the available services but also machines, applications, and devices.
The above accomplishment is critical to the success of the pillar of improved government services as one of the national agendas factored in the UAE’s Vision 2030. Indeed, the UAE administration has already developed an initiative for implementing this pillar through its happiness positivity policy. It can now measure the degree of success of this program by collecting and analyzing data on users’ experiences with various government services. Touchpoints constitute an important aspect of realizing the UAE’s goals and national agenda regarding government services improvement as priority areas outlined in its Vision 2030 manifesto.
Recommendations
Happiness enhanced through customers’ satisfaction with government services and public goods is an important initiative in the UAE public sector. From the literature review section, this country has performed remarkably in terms of its implementation of mechanisms such as happiness ambassadors, survey machines, bliss counters, and happiness indices. However, according to studies by Straker, Wrigley, and Rosemann (2015) and Killian and McManus (2015), touchpoints produce the most effective customer experiences and satisfaction when combined to effectively serve a similar goal. Hence, to increase customers’ satisfaction with services provided by the UAE government, it is necessary to incorporate different touchpoints into all government entities. This suggestion may be implemented longitudinally. The goal is to ensure that each touchpoint enhances the UAE’s public service customers’ agendas stipulated in its Vision 2030. Consequently, individual touchpoints should support each other in all stages of public service delivery.
In addition, there is a need to visualize the available touchpoints within all UAE government entities as a whole but not as constituent elements. These agencies can shape such touchpoints in a manner that guarantees the development of remarkable customers’ experiences with services provided. This strategy may also create opportunities for developing new touchpoints that can help to build better customer experiences. Consistent with the literature on customer experience and satisfaction, this approach calls upon the UAE to include multiple constituent aspects of its business, including partners, in the whole formula of creating a happy population. For example, survey machines can be contracted. Therefore, their quality, usability, availability, and reliability are crucial in the entire procedure of realizing its Vision 2030 and national agenda. Customers should have access to various machines to report their encounters with services provided by government entities. However, the unavailability of such machines, among other touchpoints, may trigger negative opinions and responses to otherwise outstanding services rendered. Alternatively, the UAE government may not acquire the necessary data for developing its happiness indices when customers find the available machines unreliable.
A Critical Reflection on the Achievement of the Essay
This paper has achieved the goal of showing that the UAE has indeed made remarkable efforts to maintain a happy population, particularly in the present-day technology-driven world. However, the work of Baxendale, Macdonald, and Wilson (2015) suggests that people reluctantly embrace technology when it changes the prevailing status quo. These authors argue that in the plight of new technologies, people cope with issues such as obsolescence or inventiveness, effectiveness and wastefulness, and proficiency and ineptitude, among other factors (Baxendale et al., 2015). Hence, discontentment may arise if touchpoints such as survey machines, web applications, happiness ambassadors, and bliss counters lead to increased queuing time compared to conventional approaches involving direct personal contact with employees deployed to deliver services. Nevertheless, this paper has successfully depicted the UAE as a country whose main agenda is to ensure that no citizen reports any discontentment when accessing services from all government agencies.
Satisfaction depends on the capacity of services delivered to meet users’ expectations. Reddy (2017) argues that people’s readiness to embrace a given technology is determined by the underlying level of innovativeness and customers’ optimism that it will fulfill their demands. This researcher also identifies insecurity and discomfort as important inhibitors of customers’ satisfaction with services rendered via technological intervention machines and systems. Marin (2014) argues that the freedom to choose between personal contact and interaction machines influences customers’ contentment with automated systems. In a similar study, Reddy (2017) reveals that experiential or rational cognitive styles predict people’s choices. However, this paper has achieved its goal of confirming the UAE’s dedication to ensuring that customers maintain positive attitudes toward services delivered or products sold to them in this country.
Conclusion
Touchpoints have been defined as avenues where customers get the opportunity to communicate their experiences with various services or products. In the UAE, the happiness positivity initiative has facilitated the occurrence of such interactions through happiness ambassadors, bliss counters, and indices established across different government entities. Survey machines are utilized to report customers’ experiences. Amid the stated implications and issues emerging in the application of touchpoints in the UAE through the statewide program aimed at enhancing customers’ happiness with services provided by the government, positive experiences are crucial in boosting their contentment levels. Therefore, other countries may benchmark from the UAE upon considering that this country is one of the first nations to implement such an initiative. Nevertheless, to increase customer satisfaction, this paper has recommended the integration of different touchpoints, both vertically and horizontally. The UAE also needs to involve all partners in the program.
References
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