HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai, has unveiled the 5-star mark at Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) Head Office for customer happiness. HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, HE Abdulla Mohammed Al Basti, Secretary General of Dubai Executive Council, EVPs, VPs and employees also attended the ceremony. This is a milestone for DEWA for excellence and government innovation. His Highness visited the Head Office, where he was briefed by Al Tayer about the advanced services available at the Head Office, which has successfully implemented a number of excellent customer service initiatives to ensure their happiness.
The 5-star rating at DEWA Head Office reflects the considerable commitment of DEWA to apply best practices and international criteria for customer services. The centre provides all DEWA’s electricity, water, billing and consumption enquiry services. The centre has 25 kiosks that provide seamless and easy-to-use services, and handled 100,000 transactions in 2017. Also, the centre provides value-added services such as valet parking, Green Charger electric vehicle charging stations, and a business centre.
DEWA has developed a bespoke customer happiness meter, which recorded a customer happiness score of 97%. DEWA is working to ensure a positive environment for its employees as well, with their happiness at Head Office reaching 93.7%.
“I would like to thank His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai, for visiting our Head Office. This reflects the focus of our wise leadership on instilling the concept of exceptional leadership that incentivises teams to unlock their potential to exceed expectations and achieve excellence in the quality of the design and delivery of outstanding services. This represents the UAE’s goal to build the government of the future. It shows the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to achieve the goals of the star-rating system launched by His Highness to provide excellent and innovative services. This will enable customers to have a comprehensive range of integrated services that are smart and save time. This is part of DEWA’s efforts to achieve the goals of Dubai’s 10x initiative launched by His Highness to advance Dubai’s leadership into the future, and to create a 10-year lead over other cities around the world by government innovation,” said Al Tayer.
“At DEWA, we are working to achieve the Dubai Plan 2021 goals to create a pioneering and excellent government that is proactive and creative in meeting the needs of individuals and society as a whole. We aim to be top in quality and excellence in all our operations. DEWA adopts innovative and efficient mechanisms in customer service to ensure the happiness of its stakeholders and improve the quality of its services, to achieve its vision to become a sustainable innovative world-class utility,” said Al Tayer.
“DEWA places considerable importance on customer comments. These are essential inputs in our development and continuous improvement process to raise stakeholder happiness about government services. All our initiatives are based on keeping in regular contact with our stakeholders. We listen to their suggestions, comments and ideas, which will be translated into services and initiatives that meets their requirements and exceeds their expectations,” said Al Tayer.
DEWA is aligned to the UAE Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which represents a new phase in Smart Government and reflects its efforts to keep pace with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which encompasses artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, and other technologies that redefine the way people are dealing with governments and their institutions. DEWA has robots at its Head Office, which provide the Rammas service to answer customer enquiries in English and Arabic, and a self-driving live videoconferencing system, which is the first of its kind.
DEWA is working to achieve its social responsibility objectives for People of Determination to fully integrate them within society and find new jobs for them, to overcome any challenges they may experience in a positive manner. This will empower them to be creative, which is why DEWA has designed its Head Office to be fully-accessible to People of Determination. The Government assessment scored 98% for the Head Office for compatibility with international standards.
The Smart Centre at DEWA Head Office provides several smart services for customers, and streamlines the transaction process, with minimal or no support needed from staff. Most services can be easily used on smart tablets and DEWA’s smart applications. The Smart Centre features a Future Centre, so that customers can design and develop new services, for their happiness. The Centre also includes the Tayseer service for bill payment, to facilitate payments by cheques, using Emirates NBD’s cheque deposit machines.
The Smart Centre also provides the Dubai Smart Government ‘Dubai ID’ service for customers to log in to multiple smart services through a single account. It is also equipped with Etisalat Public Payment Machines, for easy payment of common bills.
The UAE is the first in the world to adopt the star rating system for government services. This is with the goal of achieving a considerable advance in government service efficiency to elevate them to the highest international standards within an integrated framework of criteria for operations that surpass those of hotels, banks, and airlines.