Etihad Etisalat Mobily named finalist in 2009 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) was named a Finalist earlier this week at in the Sales Department of the Year – Telecommunications and Sales Director of the Year categories in the third annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

The awards are presented by the Stevie® Awards, which organizes several of the world’s leading business awards shows including the prestigious American Business Awards.

More than 500 entries from companies of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted to this year’s competition. There are 27 categories for customer service professionals, including Contact Center of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year; as well as 41 categories for sales professionals, ranging from Global Sales Leader of the Year to Sales Training Program of the Year to Sales Department of the Year of the Year. Mobily’s application for the Sales Department of the Year – Telecommunications category focused on a number of progressive commercial practices and Mobily’s sales performance over the years. Among these practices is Mobily’s women only outlets, whereby Mobily was the first telecommunication operator to launch shops for women. These shops are staffed by women only, thereby balancing between the needs of women and the provisions of Islamic Sharia, as well as creating more job opportunities for women in the process.

At the level of Sales performance, Mobily achieved its first one million subscribers in less than 90 days of commercial operations (launched on May 25, 2005), representing a penetration of 4% of Saudi Arabia’s population-base (estimated at 25 million in 2005). Today, after almost three and a half years of commercial operations, Mobily has over 14 million customers. Moreover, Mobily possibly has the largest telecommunication retail outlet franchise- partnership network in the Middle East. The company has more than 500 points of sale in over 100 Saudi cities, as franchises, co-branded and mega outlets three in major cities, Riyadh, Dammam, and Jeddah. The franchise network is supplemented by an additional network of 36,000 points of sale served by Mobily partners. To widen the circle of stakeholders, Mobily launched a branded preferred reseller program last year that now reaches out to customers through 2,500 points of sale across the Kingdom.

Furthermore, Mobily’s understanding of the human element of business has pushed the company’s performance beyond perceived limits. As such, after launching an internal employee retention plan, whereby key staff are granted generous bonuses to stay on, Mobily extended that same retention program to key staff working for its partners.

In the second category, where Mobily was also named a finalist was Sales Director of the Year, Mobily pitched its Director of Sales, Ziad Shaltuni, one of Mobily’s prelaunch team members and responsible for most of Mobily’s sales revenue.

“Being named a Finalist in the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service is an important achievement,” said Michael Gallagher, president of the Stevie Awards. “It means that independent business executives have agreed that the nominee is worthy of international recognition. We congratulate all of the Finalists on their achievement and wish them well in the competition.” “We are proud to have been selected as finalists by the esteemed Stevie Awards judges. If anything, this is recognition for our hard working and dedicated Sales and Customer care team,” said Ziad Shaltuni, Mobily Director of Sales.

 

Mar 9, 2009