87% of UAE Brands Changed Customer Experiences Due to The Pandemic

• 88% of UAE Brands Created a Deeper Connection with Customers Over the Past year.
• 89% of UAE Brands Advanced Marketing Tech Stack More in 2020 than in 2017-2019.
• 87% of UAE Brands Experimented with New Marketing Approaches During Pandemic.
• Mashreq Bank Digitally Transforms Customer Experiences with Sitecore Solutions.

Sitecore® the global leader in digital experience management software, announced today that 87% of UAE IT decision-makers, and 88% in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), have had to fundamentally change their customer experiences in response to the pandemic.

The research, conducted by YouGov MENA, surveyed more than 650 IT decision-makers across 12 countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Levant, and Egypt.

In response to changing customer demands, 88% of UAE IT decision-makers, and 84% of MENA IT decision-makers, said their brands created a deeper connection with their customers over the past year.

The pandemic has also accelerated organizations’ digital transformation roadmaps. Among respondents, 89% in the UAE, and 83% in MENA, said their brands had advanced their marketing technology stack more in the last year than in the previous three years before 2020. Thanks to these new technological capabilities, 87% of UAE respondents, and 84% of MENA respondents, said they experimented with a number of new marketing approaches during the pandemic.

“With 88% of UAE brands, and 87% of MENA brands, changing their customer experience in response to the pandemic, regional brands understand that they need to prioritize digital experiences, especially for Millennials and Generation Z customers,” said Mohammed Alkhotani, Area Vice President – Middle East and Africa, Sitecore. “Leading Middle East brands, such as Mashreq Bank, emphasize the need to put technology firmly at the center of their business to consistently create personalized experiences.”

Putting CX at the heart of banking

More than 50 years on from Mashreq’s inception, the bank maintains an unwavering commitment towards customer centricity. Whether it is transforming ideas into solutions, or harnessing digitization to provide a seamless banking experience; developing products that empower and meet the needs of customers’ is a value deeply ingrained within the bank. Through Mashreq’s digital-first approach, customers can benefit from a banking experience that is convenient, tailored to their needs, and meets their evolving demands.

Mashreq embarked on an exciting digital transformation journey with a key objective of improving the experience of our customers by offering them superior services, whenever and wherever they need. A modern, intuitive and user-friendly website is imperative in digital transformation. In collaboration with Sitecore, Mashreq Bank not just enhanced the overall experience on its website, Mashreq Bank also implemented a Sitecore content management system that enables the bank to deliver content across all customer channels through an API, which makes it a powerful tool for its mobile and web developers.