Brands Have Only One Shot to Win Over UAE Customers: Survey
For more than a year, consumers in the UAE have been relying on digital services, which have altered how they engage with brands, consume goods and services, and make purchasing decisions. A global study by Cisco AppDynamic shows that people are using 30 per cent more applications today than they did before the pandemic. The […]
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For more than a year, consumers in the UAE have been relying on digital services, which have altered how they engage with brands, consume goods and services, and make purchasing decisions. A global study by Cisco AppDynamic shows that people are using 30 per cent more applications today than they did before the pandemic.
The research highlights that because of their increasing reliance and use of digital services, 91 per cent of UAE consumers (15 per cent higher than the global average) say their expectations of digital services have increased since the start of 2020.
Alarmingly, however, the study revealed that consumers now have a zero tolerance policy for poor application experience. In the UAE, when their expectations aren’t met, 74 per cent of consumers blame the application and the brand no matter where the issue stems from. Whether it’s within the application itself — such as pages loading slowly, downtime, or security failures; or external factors like internet connectivity, slow payment gateways or technical issues with third party services — to the consumer the responsibility is firmly on the brand.
The research goes on to find that 73 per cent of consumers in the UAE (16 per cent higher than the global average) state that brands have one shot to impress them with their digital experiences before they switch to another provider, 69 per cent of consumers believe it’s the responsibility of the brand to ensure that digital services work perfectly, and 98 per cent say they expect digital services to have reliable, consistent performance.
Also Read: Brands Need To Catch Up To Consumers’ Expectations: Gap Study
Loyalty lies with brands
Consumers have not only come to rely on applications and digital services to function in everyday life, but they also used them to facilitate social interactions in the absence of traditional ways of connecting in person. The research found that the majority of UAE consumers (95 per cent) say that digital services have become a critical part of daily life, with 98 per cent stating they helped them get through the pandemic in a positive way. Additionally, UAE consumers are now loyal to brands based on how significantly they invested in digital services during the pandemic.
- 85 per cent say they feel grateful to the brands that invested in digital during the pandemic so they could get access to the services that they love and rely on.
- 82 per cent say they feel more loyal to brands that went above and beyond with the quality of their digital service during the pandemic.
Almost 75 per cent of UAE consumers now state their expectations for digital services have changed forever and they will no longer tolerate poor performance, 68 per cent consider it disrespectful to users for brands to offer a poor digital experience in this day and age, and 74 per cent believe most problems with digital services and applications are completely avoidable.
“Applications have become the lifeline to normality for people in every corner of the world and consumers are no longer willing to settle for anything less than a perfect digital experience,” said Linda Tong, vice president and general manager of Cisco AppDynamics. “Technologists are now under more pressure than ever to deliver the ‘total application experience’ to users within their first interaction. AppDynamics is the only provider that can help them meet users’ expectations by delivering a critical component of Cisco’s full-stack observability solution, which helps technologists see, understand, and optimise what happens inside and beyond their IT architecture — all through the lens of business impact.”
Over 80 per cent of UAE consumers stated that even as life returns to normal, they know they will continue to rely on the digital services they utilised during the pandemic. This means the pressure technologists are under to tackle the complexities of modern architectures in order to deliver flawless digital experiences isn’t going away.
